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...Iceland, or Ireland. These constraints began to evaporate in the 1950s with the Lockheed Super Constellation and the Douglas DC-7. The ultimate versions appeared in 1956–57 as the DC-7C, known as the “Seven Seas,” which was capable of nonstop transatlantic flights in either direction, and the Lockheed 1649A Starliner, which could fly nonstop on polar routes from......

...gamble for Boeing, which for many years had been almost entirely a military supplier, the 707 was a commercial success after entering service in 1958. Douglas responded with its similar looking DC-8. Both aircraft were larger (some configurations could carry more than 200 passengers) and faster (more than 600 miles [965 km] per hour) than the modified Comet 4 that began service on the New......

...ballistic missile (first launched in 1957), which later became a first-stage space launcher and gave rise to the Delta family of launch vehicles. In 1965 Douglas first flew its twin-engine DC-9 short-haul commercial jetliner, which became the company’s most successful transport since the DC-3....

In addition to the potentials originating in nerve or muscle cells, relatively steady or slowly varying potentials (often designated dc) are known. These dc potentials occur in the following cases: in areas where cells have been damaged and where ionized potassium is leaking (as much as 50 millivolts); when one part of the brain is compared with another part (up to one millivolt); when......

order of British knighthood established by King George I in 1725, conferred as a reward either for military service or for exemplary civilian merit. Like most chivalric orders, it has antecedents that reach far before the actual date of its founding. Bathing as a purification ritual was probably introduced in a religious context with knighthood in the 11th century, but it has be...

...by means of a microprocessor and converts the data back into analog audio signals that can be used by the amplifier of a conventional stereo sound system. The early 1990s saw the introduction of digital compact cassette (DCC) recorders, which were similar to DAT recorders but could play the older analog tape cassettes in addition to similarly shaped digital cassettes. See also sound......

...for intelligence, operations, administration, and science and technology. It is managed by a director and a deputy director, both appointed by the president and subject to Senate confirmation. The director of central intelligence (DCI) plays two distinct roles as both head of the CIA and a leading adviser to the president on intelligence matters relating to national security. The powers vested....

British order of knighthood founded in 1818 by the Prince Regent, later King George IV, to commemorate the British protectorate over the Ionian islands (now in Greece) and Malta, which came under British rule in 1814....

British order of knighthood instituted by Queen Victoria in 1896 to reward personal services rendered the monarch. As it is a family order, conferment of this honour is solely at the discretion of the British sovereign....

...and American servicemen added jury-rigged plows for breaking through hedgerows in the bocage country of Normandy. Perhaps the most famous variation was the “Duplex Drive,” or DD, tank, a Sherman equipped with extendable and collapsible skirts that made it buoyant enough to be launched from a landing craft and make its way to shore under......

...prose were utilitarian: notes on Latin texts dealing with weights and measures, an agreement, a list of church dues, and an astronomical commentary. Shortly before the middle of the 10th century, Howel (Hywel) Dda, according to tradition, had the Welsh laws codified. Although the earliest Welsh law manuscripts belong to the first half of the 13th century, some of the texts probably derive......

The goal of the North American Numbering Plan was to enable any telephone user to dial directly any other telephone user within North America. Although the concept of direct distance dialing (DDD) originated in the 1940s, the necessary switching equipment was not introduced until 1951. As the acceptance of DDD grew, so did the need to expand the number of possible area codes. By 1976, 132 out......

former country (1949–90) that constitutes the northeastern section of present-day Germany....

After predental courses, training consists of four years in a faculty of dentistry to qualify as a doctor of dental surgery (D.D.S.) or doctor of dental medicine (D.M.D.), both degrees being equivalent. The program of studies during the four-year course includes the following biological sciences: human anatomy, biochemistry, bacteriology, histology, pathology, pharmacology, microbiology, and......

Diaminodiphenyl sulfone, or DDS, was synthesized in Germany in 1908, but it was not until the 1930s that researchers began to investigate its possible antibacterial properties. In 1941 doctors at Carville began to test a derivative of the compound, called promin, on patients. Promin had drawbacks—it had to be given intravenously, on a regular schedule, and for a long period of......

a synthetic insecticide belonging to the family of organic halogen compounds, highly toxic toward a wide variety of insects as a contact poison that apparently exerts its effect by disorganizing the nervous system....

...protein or amino acids needed for growth or other body functions, either as a percentage of the diet or as the total grams or units required per day. The amounts of energy needed are measured as digestible energy (DE), metabolizable energy (ME), net energy (NE), or total digestible nutrients (TDN). These values differ with species. The gross energy (GE) value of a feed is the amount of heat......

...to complete the change to dextrose. Modern syrups and crystalline dextrose are made by continuous processes. The degree of conversion of the starch into the sugar dextrose is expressed as D.E. (dextrose equivalents), and confectionery syrups have a D.E. of about 36 to 55, while the fuller conversion of products with D.E. of 96 to 99 can be made for the production of almost pure glucose or......

...received an M.D. degree in Guadalajara in 1899 and practiced medicine, first in his native town and after 1916 in Mexico City. His best-known work, Los de abajo (1916; The Under Dogs), depicting the futility of the revolution, was written at the campfire during forced marches while he served as an army doctor with Pancho Villa in 1915. Forced to flee across...

...empire. An apologetic biography of his grandfather Basil I, which he appended to an anonymous chronicle known as Theophanes Continuatus, stressed the glory of the founder of his dynasty. De administrando imperio, a handbook of foreign politics, is perhaps his most valuable work, a storehouse of information on Slavic and Turkic peoples about whom little else is known except......

Procopius’ writings fall into three divisions: the Polemon (De bellis; Wars), in eight books; Peri Ktismaton (De aedificiis; Buildings), in six books; and the Anecdota (Historia arcana; Secret History), published posthumously....

...his In artem analyticem isagoge (1591; “Introduction to the Analytical Arts”) closely resembles a modern elementary algebra text. His contribution to the theory of equations is De aequationum recognitione et emendatione (1615; “Concerning the Recognition and Emendation of Equations”), in which he presented methods for solving equations of second, third,...

...that deals with the effects of the physical environment on living organisms over an extended period of time. Although Hippocrates touched on these matters 2,000 years ago in his treatise on Air, Waters, and Places, the science of bioclimatology is relatively new. It developed into a significant field of study during the 1960s owing largely to a growing concern over the deteriorating......

...of Rome composed in Latin. This work, of whose seven books only a few fragments survive, related the traditions of the founding of Rome and other Italian cities. Cato’s only surviving work is De agri cultura (On Farming), a treatise on agriculture written about 160 bc. De agri cultura is the oldest remaining complete prose work in Latin. It is a practic...

...and Scholia enchiriadis give the earliest written description of music in several voices: parallel organum, in which a plainchant melody is sung in parallel fourths or parallel fifths. De alia musica deals with a notational system called daseian notation. Although it never became generally accepted, it was an early attempt to show exact pitch in musical notation; it used......

novelist, short-story writer, poet, and author of popular travel books and children’s stories....

...lyrical poems, of which the most important are Lepidina, a charming account of the wedding between a river god and a nymph, with a distinctly Neapolitan flavour, and a collection called De amore coniugali, a warm and personal series of poems on the joys and sorrows of family life. Pontano wrote Latin as if it were his native tongue, with unusual flexibility, smoothness, and......

Bergman introduced many new reagents and devised analytical methods for chemical analysis. His De Analysi Aquarum (1778; “On Water Analysis”) is the first comprehensive account of the analysis of mineral waters....

For Newton, such computations were the epitome of calculus. They may be found in his Tractatus and the manuscript De Analysi per Aequationes Numero Terminorum Infinitas (1669; “On Analysis by Equations with an Infinite Number of Terms”), which he was stung into writing after his logarithmic series was rediscovered and published by Nicolaus Mercator. Newton.....

...studied in France about 1140, and his views reflect those of the Neoplatonic school of Chartres, Fr., and the mystical tradition centred at the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris. Two of his works, De anima (“On the Soul”) and De immortalitate animae (“On the Immortality of the Soul”), suggest the Neoplatonic argument for the soul’s natural immo...

...though mostly they survive only in fragments. Like his master, Aristotle wrote initially in dialogue form, and his early ideas show a strong Platonic influence. His dialogue Eudemus, for example, reflects the Platonic view of the soul as imprisoned in the body and as capable of a happier life only when the body has been left behind. According to Aristotle, the......

Engelmann studied at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin and received his M.D. degree from the University of Würzburg in 1831. His illustrated thesis, De Antholysi Prodromus, was an important study of the morphology of monstrosities. He went to the United States in 1833, and in 1835 he settled in St. Louis, where he became a leading physician. Continuing his studies in......

...Method of the Studies of Our Time”), is rich with his reflections about pedagogical methods. This work was followed almost immediately by the publication of Vico’s great metaphysical essay De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia (“On the Ancient Wisdom of the Italians”), which was a refutation of the Rationalistic system of Descartes....

Roman soldier, governor of Britain, and author of De aquis urbis Romae (“Concerning the Waters of the City of Rome”), a history and description of the water supply of Rome, including the laws relating to its use and maintenance and other matters of importance in the history of architecture....

...however, he was again unsuccessful. Symmachus’s “Third Relatio to the Emperor,” written on this topic, and St. Ambrose’s two letters of opposition survive. Symmachus’s oration De ara Victoriae was considered so brilliant that even after 19 years the poet Prudentius found it necessary to write a reply to it. The increasingly Christian character of ...

Roman architect, engineer, and author of the celebrated treatise De architectura (On Architecture), a handbook for Roman architects....

Roman architect, engineer, and author of the celebrated treatise De architectura (On Architecture), a handbook for Roman architects....

Although Serlio’s buildings were not influential, his treatise Tutte l’opere d’architettura, et prospetiva (1537–75; “Complete Works on Architecture and Perspective”) exerted immense influence throughout Europe. It was translated into English in 1611 and into other European languages....

...give the title De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii to the first two books and entitle the remaining seven De arte grammatica, De arte dialectica, De arte rhetorica, De geometrica, De arithmetica, De astrologia, and De harmonia. Mercury gives his bride, who is made divine, seven maidens, and each declaims on that one of the seven liberal arts that she represents. The.....

...to be explained either by matter alone or by form alone but rather by his whole being (entitate tota). This notion was the first germ of the future “monad.” In 1666 he wrote De Arte Combinatoria (“On the Art of Combination”), in which he formulated a model that is the theoretical ancestor of some modern computers: all reasoning, all discovery, verbal or...

...before 439. Its overall title is not known. Manuscripts give the title De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii to the first two books and entitle the remaining seven De arte grammatica, De arte dialectica, De arte rhetorica, De geometrica, De arithmetica, De astrologia, and De harmonia. Mercury gives his bride, who is made divine, seven maidens, and each declaims......

...ad 400 and certainly before 439. Its overall title is not known. Manuscripts give the title De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii to the first two books and entitle the remaining seven De arte grammatica, De arte dialectica, De arte rhetorica, De geometrica, De arithmetica, De astrologia, and De harmonia. Mercury......

French painter and writer on art whose Latin poem De arte graphica (1668) had great influence on the aesthetic discussions of the day. It remained in print continuously into the 19th century....

...Its overall title is not known. Manuscripts give the title De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii to the first two books and entitle the remaining seven De arte grammatica, De arte dialectica, De arte rhetorica, De geometrica, De arithmetica, De astrologia, and De harmonia. Mercury gives his bride, who is made divine, seven maidens, and each declaims on that one of the.....

...descended from the Klesmorim, a group of medieval Jewish entertainers. The first dancing master known by name was Domenico da Piacenza, who in 1416 published the first European dance manual, De arte saltandi et choreas ducendi (“On the Art of Dancing and Directing Choruses”). His disciple, Antonio Cornazano, a nobleman by birth, became an immensely respected minister,......

...to later generations; the edifices he erected, particularly the classic style of the Castello del Monte—a fusion of poetry and mathematics in stone; and, most outstanding, his own work De arte venandi cum avibus, a standard work on falconry based entirely on his own experimental research....

Conon’s works included De astrologia (“On Astronomy”), in seven books, which contain the Chaldean observations of solar eclipses, and Pros Thrasydaion (“In Reply to Thrasydaeus”), concerning the intersection points of conics with other conics and with circles. None of his works survives....

...De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii to the first two books and entitle the remaining seven De arte grammatica, De arte dialectica, De arte rhetorica, De geometrica, De arithmetica, De astrologia, and De harmonia. Mercury gives his bride, who is made divine, seven maidens, and each declaims on that one of the seven liberal arts that she represents. The prose style is.....

...work that was to appear under the title of Instauratio Magna (“The Great Instauration”), but like many of his literary schemes, it was never completed. Its first part, De Augmentis Scientiarum, appeared in 1623 and is an expanded, Latinized version of his earlier work the Advancement of Learning, published in 1605 (the first really important......

...Scriptures”) anticipates Dante, and the Franciscan from Verona, Giacomino da Verona, author of De Jerusalem celesti (c. 1250; “On the Heavenly Jerusalem”) and De Babilonia civitate infernali (c. 1250; “On the Infernal Babylonian State”), were the liveliest and most imaginative of this group....

The richest source for Mark’s ascetical and doctrinal theology consists of his treatise De Baptismo (“On Baptism”). Rejecting other traditional explanations for personal sin, Mark asserts that following baptism every sin is the result of human choice. Christ’s atonement, by virtue of its reconciliation of alienated man to God, restores perfect freedom of the will...

...function was anadochos, to which the Latin susceptor is equivalent. The word sponsor in this ecclesiastical sense occurred for the first time in Tertullian’s 2nd-century treatise De Baptismo. The sponsors to whom he alluded may have been in many cases the actual parents, and even in the 5th century it was not felt to be inappropriate that they should be so; Augustine...

...self-satisfaction of the Donatists seemed an equally effective argument against the Church of England. For the theology, Augustine in De baptismo contra Donatistas (401; On Baptism) expounds his anti-Donatist views most effectively, but the stenographic Gesta Collationis Carthaginensis (411; “Acts of the Council of Carthage”) offers a vivid......

...dialogues with a new, Platonized Christian content: Contra academicos (386; Against the Academics), De ordine (386; On Providence), De beata vita (386; On the Blessed Life), and Soliloquia (386/387; Soliloquies). These works both do and do not resemble Augustine’s later ecclesiastical writings and are greatly debated for th...

Other Nominees...

English zoologist and morphologist known for his contributions to experimental embryology, anatomy, and evolution....

world’s largest producer and distributor of diamonds. Headquarters are in Johannesburg, S.Af....

Procopius’ writings fall into three divisions: the Polemon (De bellis; Wars), in eight books; Peri Ktismaton (De aedificiis; Buildings), in six books; and the Anecdota (Historia arcana; Secret History), published posthumously....

...feared. But in 1553, though a Catholic, Tarnowski supported the largely Calvinist szlachta against the restoration of independent Roman Catholic ecclesiastical courts. He wrote De bello cum . . . Turcis gerendo (1552; “Concerning the Wars with the Turks”), about the emperor Charles V’s projected war against the Turks, and Consilium rationis bellicae......

...liberty, and property, he rejected the Aristotelian notion of slavery as the natural condition of certain men. He criticized most of the practices of Spanish colonization in the Indies in his De Bello et de Indis (“On War and the Indies”). The islands of the Indies he viewed as sovereign states legally equal to Spain as members of a worldwide community of nations....

The locus classicus for the Celtic gods of Gaul is the passage in Caesar’s Commentarii de bello Gallico (52–51 bc; The Gallic War) in which he names five of them together with their functions. Mercury was the most honoured of all the gods and many images of him were to be found. Mercury was regarded as the inventor of all the arts, the patron of travelers ...

...whether to accept clergy who had lapsed in the face of persecution, perhaps accounts for the ultimate fate of his writings, all but one of which were lost. His first two treatises, De bello intestino (c. 370?; “On Civil War”) and Expositiones diversarum causarum (c. 375?; “Explanations of Diverse Causes”...

...quality for a Roman emperor. De tranquillitate animi, De constantia sapientis, De vita beata, and De otio consider various aspects of the life and qualities of the Stoic wise man. De beneficiis is a diffuse treatment of benefits as seen by giver and recipient. De brevitate vitae demonstrates that our human span is long enough if time is properly employed—which...

Italian general, an early convert to Fascism who helped the party’s founder and chief, Benito Mussolini, gain power....

...beata, and De otio consider various aspects of the life and qualities of the Stoic wise man. De beneficiis is a diffuse treatment of benefits as seen by giver and recipient. De brevitate vitae demonstrates that our human span is long enough if time is properly employed—which it seldom is. Best written and most compelling are the Epistulae morales,......

any aspect of the behaviour or properties of a material object that varies in time or space in conformity with the mathematical equations that describe waves. By analogy with the wave and particle behaviour of light that had already been established experimentally, the French physicist Louis de Broglie suggested (1924) that particles might have wave properties in addition to particle properties. T...

Four years after having nearly quit swimming altogether, Inge de Bruijn of The Netherlands turned in a phenomenal performance at the Olympic Games in 2000. De Bruijn won gold medals in the 100-m butterfly, the 100-m freestyle, and the 50-m freestyle in Sydney, Australia, and set new world records in each of these events. She also earned a silver medal as part of the Dutch 4 × 100-m freestyl...

early English poet and author of Handlyng Synne, a confessional manual, and of the chronicle Story of England. The works are preserved independently in several manuscripts, none of certain provenance....

...of Design, they chose to exhibit independently, hoping to draw public attention to their paintings. The members of The Ten were Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Thomas W. Dewing, Joseph De Camp, Frank W. Benson, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Robert Reid, and E.E. Simmons. When Twachtman died in......

American writer (b. Nov. 27, 1907, New York, N.Y.—d. Nov. 6, 2000, Plano, Texas), wrote more than 100 science-fiction and fantasy books. He began his writing career in the late 1930s as a contributor to Astounding Stories, the influential science-fiction magazine edited by John W. Campbell. De Camp’s best-known novels were The Incomplete Enchanter (1940), written with F...

American writer (b. Nov. 27, 1907, New York, N.Y.—d. Nov. 6, 2000, Plano, Texas), wrote more than 100 science-fiction and fantasy books. He began his writing career in the late 1930s as a contributor to Astounding Stories, the influential science-fiction magazine edited by John W. Campbell. De Camp’s best-known novels were The Incomplete Enchanter (1940), written with F...

city, Pulaski county, central Arkansas, U.S., on the Arkansas River opposite Little Rock. It was settled in 1812 as De Cantillon, became Huntersville in 1853, and was later renamed Argenta for the Hotel Argenta, built there in the late 1850s. The community developed after the arrival of the Memphis and Little Rock Railroad in 1853 and later ...

Another tract, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, suggested that the sacraments themselves had been taken captive by the church. Luther even went so far as to reduce the number of the sacraments from seven—baptism, the Eucharist or mass, penance, confirmation, ordination, marriage, and......

Among younger voices, two extremely professional authors—cosmopolitan minimalist Andrea De Carlo and painstaking observer and stylist Daniele Del Giudice—were “discovered” in the early 1980s by Italo Calvino. In novels such as Macno (1984; Eng. trans. Macno) and Yucatan (1986; Eng. trans. Yucatan), De Carlo, a......

American actress who appeared in a string of B-westerns and was best remembered on the big screen for her role as the wife of Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956), but the character with whom she was most indelibly identified was that of Lily Munster—the vampirelike matriarch of the TV sitcom family The Munsters (1964–66). Some of De Carlo’s other films included...

...indicated by Dante and Petrarch. His other Latin works include De claris mulieribus (1360–74; Concerning Famous Women), a collection of biographies of famous women; and De casibus virorum illustrium (1355–74; “On the Fates of Famous Men”), on the inevitable catastrophe awaiting all who are too fortunate....

Bradwardine’s most famous work in his day was a treatise on grace and free will entitled De causa Dei (1344), in which he so stressed the divine concurrence with all human volition that his followers concluded from it a universal determinism. Bradwardine also wrote works on mathematics. In the treatise De proportionibus velocitatum in motibus (1328), he asserted that an arithm...

Yet, the longest book and the one that tells the most about the Byzantine mentality (and most particularly the mind of the writer) is De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae, basically a minute description of the elaborate ceremonial and processions that made the emperor a hieratic symbol of the state and strove to impress foreigners with his grandeur. There is no doubt that it helped Byzantium......

Italian painter who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting....

author of the only ancient treatise on geography in classical Latin, De situ orbis (“A Description of the World”), also known as De chorographia (“Concerning Chorography”). Written about ad 43 or 44, it remained influential until the beginning of the age of exploration, 13 centuries later. Though probably intended for the general reader, Mela...

...met Blaise Pascal, with whom he had already been in correspondence on mathematical problems. Huygens had already acquired a European reputation by his publications in mathematics, especially his De Circuli Magnitudine Inventa of 1654, and by his discovery in 1659 of the true shape of the rings of Saturn—made possible by the improvements he had introduced in the construction of the...

...speeds, and paths of parts of matter. His great trilogy—De Corpore (1655; “Concerning Body”), De Homine (1658; “Concerning Man”), and De Cive (1642; “Concerning the Citizen”)—was his attempt to arrange the various pieces of natural science, as well as psychology and politics, into a hierarchy, ranging...

At the beginning of the 5th century, Augustine began his work The City of God as an answer to pagan complaints that the sack of Rome—supposedly “the eternal city”—by Alaric and his Goths in 410 was due to the abandonment of the old gods in favour of Christianity. Augustine showed the inconsistency of the critics in failing to blame the civic god...

...(short pastoral poems) on contemporary events, follows classical models on lines already indicated by Dante and Petrarch. His other Latin works include De claris mulieribus (1360–74; Concerning Famous Women), a collection of biographies of famous women; and De casibus virorum illustrium (1355–74; “On the Fates of Famous Men”), on the inevi...

...freedman Polybius on the loss of a son but with a sycophantic plea for recall from Corsica. The De ira deals at length with the passion of anger, its consequences, and control. The De clementia, an exhortatory address to Nero, commends mercy as the sovereign quality for a Roman emperor. De tranquillitate animi, De constantia sapientis, De vita beata, and De otio......

...but with the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century came a widespread need to perform repetitive operations efficiently. With other activities being mechanized, why not calculation? In 1820 Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar of France effectively met this challenge when he built his Arithmometer, the first commercial mass-produced calculating device. It could perform addition, subtraction,......

Latin grammarian and lexicographer, author of the De compendiosa doctrina, a lexicon in which are preserved extracts from the works of many earlier writers, which Nonius used for illustration. It consists of 20 chapters—the 16th is lost. The first 12 deal with language and grammar, and the brief remaining chapters are on a variety of subjects (e.g., clothing). By means of his......

...He discussed the eminent historian Thucydides in an important essay and in a letter to his friend Ammaeus. His essay Peri syntheseos onomaton (On the Arrangement of Words; often cited by its Latin title, De compositione verborum) is the only extant ancient discussion of word order. Dionysius was a mediocre......

...Council of Basel in 1432, he gained recognition for his opposition to the candidate put forward by Pope Eugenius IV for the archbishopric of Trier. To his colleagues at the council he dedicated De concordantia catholica (1433; “On Catholic Concordance”), in which he expressed support for the supremacy of the general councils of the church over the authority of the papacy. I...

...Kreatief, Yang, and De Brakke Hond, as well as by the critical work of Hugo Brems, Hugo Bousset, and Herman de Coninck. Brems proved an astute and skeptical chronicler of contemporary literature in general, Bousset championed postmodernist fragmentation and formal experimentation in prose fiction,......

...(1622–33). Among his more important works are Medulla Theologiae (1623; The Marrow of Sacred Divinity, 1642) and De Conscientia et Ejus Jure vel Casibus (1632; Conscience, 1639). The latter text was considered for many years by the Dutch Reformed Church to be a standard treatise on Christian ethics and the variety of ethical situations faced by......

...in terms of Greek political theory. The bulk of his philosophical writings belong to the period between February 45 and November 44. His output and range of subjects were astonishing: the lost De consolatione, prompted by his daughter’s death; Hortensius, an exhortation to the study of philosophy, which proved instrumental in St. Augustine’s conversion; the difficult...

Loosening the allegorical forms further, some authors have combined prose with verse. Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (c. ad 524) and Dante’s The New Life (c. 1293) interrupt the prose discourse with short poems. Verse and prose then interact to give a new thematic perspective. A related mixing of elem...

...century, Justus Lipsius, a Flemish scholar and Latin Humanist, was responsible for the first restatement of Stoicism as a defensible and thoroughgoing (Christian) philosophy of man. His treatises De constantia (1584) and Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri V (1589) were widely known in many editions and translations. His defense of Stoic doctrine in Manuductio ad Stoicam.....

Cicero is a minor but by no means negligible figure in the history of Latin poetry. His best known poems (which survive only in fragments) were the epics De consulatu suo (On His Consulship) and De temporibus suis (On His Life and Times), which were criticized in antiquity for their self-praise. Cicero’s verse is technically important; he refined the hexameter, using wo...

Fracastoro outlined his concept of epidemic diseases in De contagione et contagiosis morbis (1546; “On Contagion and Contagious Diseases”), stating that each is caused by a different type of rapidly multiplying minute body and that these bodies are transferred from the infector to the infected in three ways: by direct contact; by carriers such as soiled clothing and linen;......

Cydones is the author of the moral philosophical essay De contemnenda morte (“On Despising Death”), an apology for his conversion to Latin Catholicism, and a voluminous collection of 447 letters, valuable for the history of Byzantine relations with the West. The principal documentary sources for Byzantium’s gradual submission to the Turks are his Symbouleutikoi.....

...whose works especially inspired late medieval mystics. Dionysius used Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Dutch mystic Jan van Ruysbroeck as principal authorities in writing his classic, De contemplatione. For Dionysius, mystical contemplation was an infusion of the gift of wisdom by the Holy Spirit, for which the soul could be prepared by the renunciation of all save God. A......

Bernard’s major work, De contemptu mundi (“On Condemning the World”), was written about 1140 and was dedicated to Abbot Peter the Venerable. A poem of about 3,000 lines in dactylic hexameter, De contemptu mundi expresses the disdain for the material world characteristic of Neoplatonism, a philosophical school that ascribed reality only to the world of ideas. Decr...

American television director-producer (b. Oct. 27, 1910, New York, N.Y.—d. Sept. 15, 2001, Woodland Hills, Calif.), had what he called “the best job in television” when he served as executive producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 22 years (1970–92). He previously had produced or directed numerous TV series and variety shows as well as movies, no...