…(in the Bible) a Hebrew patriarch, son of Jacob. He was given a coat of many colours by his father, but was then sold by his jealous brothers into captivity in Egypt, where he attained high office (Gen. 30-50)…
…(c.1840–1904) American Indian leader; Indian name Inmuttooyahlatlat. As chief of the Nez Percé, he defied the efforts of the US government to move his people from Oregon until he was captured in 1877…
…husband of the Virgin Mary. A carpenter of Nazareth, he was betrothed to Mary at the time of the Annunciation. Feast day, 19 March…
…Joseph (1970-), the brother of Ralph. Notable movies: Shakespeare in Love (1998), Luther (2003), and Running with Scissors (2006)…
… a family of English business entrepreneurs and philanthropists. Joseph (1801–59) was a grocer who established several Quaker schools. His son Henry Isaac (1838–83) founded the family cocoa and chocolate manufacturing firm in York, while his brother Joseph (1836–1925) became Henry’s business partner in 1869 and founded three Rowntree trusts (1904) to support research into social welfare and policy…
…(1921–91), US producer and director; born Joseph Papirofsky. He managed Hollywood’s Actors Laboratory 1948–1950 and then founded the Shakespearean Theatre Workshop in 1954 that became the New York Shakespeare Festival. in 1960. He also founded the off-Broadway Public Theater in 1967 and directed the theaters at Lincoln Center from 1973 until 1978…
…(1921–86), German artist. One of the most influential figures of the avant-garde movement in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, his work consisted of ‘assemblages’ of various articles of rubbish. In 1979 he co-founded the German Green Party…
…(1728–99), Scottish chemist. He was important in developing accurate techniques for following chemical reactions by weighing reactants and products, and formulated the concepts of latent heat and thermal capacity…
…(1748–1814), English inventor. One of the most influential engineers of the Industrial Revolution, Bramah is best known for his hydraulic press, used for heavy forging…
…(1857–1924), Polish-born British novelist; born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski. Much of his work, including his story Heart of Darkness (1902) and the novel Nostromo (1904), explores the darkness within human nature…
…(1905–94), US actor. A star of stage, film, and television. Notable movies: Citizen Kane (1941), Gaslight (1944), The Third Man (1949), and Heaven’s Gate (1980)…
…(1923–99), American novelist. His experiences in the US air force during the Second World War inspired his best-known novel Catch-22 (1961), an absurdist black comedy satirizing war and the source of the expression ‘catch-22’…
…(1852–1931), French Marshal, Commander-in-Chief of the French army on the Western Front during the First World War; full name Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre…
… 1st Baron (1827–1912), English surgeon, inventor of antiseptic techniques in surgery. He realized the significance of Louis Pasteur’s germ theory in connection with sepsis and in 1865 he used carbolic acid dressings on patients who had undergone surgery…
…(1805–60), English civil engineer. A pioneer in railways, he enjoyed a lifelong association with Thomas Brassey, building important lines in England, Scotland, and France…
…a port city in northwestern Missouri, on the Missouri River; population 76,197 (est. 2008)…
…(1805–44), American religious leader and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons)…
…(1879–1953), Soviet statesman, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR 1922–53; born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili…
…(1779–1845), US Supreme Court associate justice 1811–45. Appointed to the Court by President Madison, he was the youngest associate justice ever to serve. He established the supremacy of Supreme Court rulings…
…(1672–1719), English essayist, poet, dramatist, and Whig politician, noted for his simple, unornamented prose style. In 1711 he founded the Spectator with Sir Richard Steele…
…(1813–92), US Supreme Court associate justice 1870–92. In 1877, he was part of the Electoral College commission that was formed to resolve the indecisiveness of the Hayes-Tilden presidential election and cast the deciding vote in favor of Rutherford B. Hayes…
…(1940–96), Russian-born American poet; born Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky. He wrote both in Russian and in English, and was most famous for his collection The End of a Beautiful Era (1977). Nobel Prize for Literature (1987)…
…(1874–1965), American physiologist. Collaborating with Herbert Gasser, he showed that the velocity of a nerve impulse is proportional to the diameter of the fibre. Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (1944, shared with Gasser)…
…(1768–1830), French mathematician; full name Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier. His studies involved him in the solution of partial differential equations by the method of separation of variables and superposition; this led him to analyse the series and integrals that are now known by his name…
…(1897–1945), German Nazi leader and politician; full name Paul Joseph Goebbels. From 1933 Goebbels was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, with control of the press, radio, and all aspects of culture. He committed suicide rather than surrender to the Allies…
…(1779–1837), English circus entertainer, who created the role of the circus clown. He performed at Covent Garden, where he became famous for his acrobatic skills…
…(1888–1969) US businessman and diplomat; full name Joseph Patrick Kennedy; father of John Fitzgerald, Robert Francis, and Edward Moore Kennedy. He made his fortune in banking, the stock market, shipbuilding, and movies…
…(1909–57), American Republican politician; full name Joseph Raymond McCarthy. Between 1950 and 1954 he was the instigator of widespread investigations into alleged communist infiltration in US public life…
…(1843–1926), US Supreme Court associate justice 1898–1925. He was the US attorney general 1897–98 when he was appointed to the Court by President McKinley…
…(1900–95), English scientist and historian. Notable works: History of Embryology (1934) and Science and Civilization in China (1954)…
…(1847–1911), Hungarian-born American newspaper proprietor and editor. A pioneer of campaigning popular journalism, he owned a number of newspapers. He made provisions in his will for the establishment of the annual Pulitzer Prizes…
…(1836–1914), British Liberal statesman. He left the Liberal party in 1886 because of Gladstone’s support of Irish Home Rule. The leader of the Liberal Unionists from 1891, he played a leading role in the handling of the Second Boer War…
…(1733–1804), English scientist and theologian. Priestley was the author of about 150 books, mostly theological or educational. His chief work was on the chemistry of gases, in which his most significant discovery was of ‘dephlogisticated air’ (oxygen) in 1774; he demonstrated that it was important to animal life, and that plants give it off in sunlight…
…(1743–1820), English botanist. He accompanied Captain James Cook on his first voyage to the Pacific, and helped to establish the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew…
…(1801–65), English gardener and architect. He became head gardener at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire in 1826 and designed a series of glass-and-iron greenhouses. He later reworked these in his design for the Crystal Palace (1851)…
…(b.1921), American economist, noted chiefly for his work on general economic equilibrium and social choice. Nobel Prize for Economics (1972)…
…(1902–76), US politician. As mayor of Chicago 1955–76, he was known as a big-city boss. He also was prominent in the national Democratic Party…
…(1732–1809), Austrian composer. A major exponent of the classical style, he taught both Mozart and Beethoven. His work includes 108 symphonies, 67 string quartets, 12 masses, and the oratorio The Creation (1796-8)…
…(1807–91), American soldier and US politician; full name Joseph Eggleston Johnston. A Confederate general, he was defeated by Grant at Vicksburg and surrendered to Sherman in 1865. From Virginia, he later served in the US House of Representatives 1879–81…
…(1857–1916), US Supreme Court associate justice 1911–16. A former associate justice in Georgia’s supreme court, he was appointed to the Court by President Taft…
…(1754–1826), French analytical chemist. He proposed the law of constant proportions, demonstrating that any pure sample of a chemical compound (such as an oxide of a metal) always contains the same elements in fixed proportions…
… Jr. (1906–97), US Supreme Court associate justice 1956–90. He was a New Jersey Supreme Court judge 1952–56 before being appointed to the US Supreme Court by President Eisenhower. He was noted for his defense of First Amendment rights…
…(1885–1951), Australian Labor statesman, Prime Minister 1945-9. He continued Labor’s nationalization and welfare programme and initiated Australia’s immigration policy…
…(1881–1958), American physicist. Davisson, together with L. H. Germer (1896–1971), discovered electron diffraction, thus confirming de Broglie’s theory of the wave nature of electrons. Nobel Prize for Physics (1937)…
…(1826–93), US banker and philanthropist. He joined his father’s brokerage firm in 1847 and merged with J. P. Morgan in 1871, making Drexel, Morgan, and Co. the most powerful investment banking house in the US. He was the founder 1892 and benefactor of Drexel Institute of Technology…
…(1787–1826), German optician and pioneer in spectroscopy. He observed and mapped the dark lines in the solar spectrum (Fraunhofer lines) which result from the absorption of particular frequencies of light by elements present in the outer layers; these are now used to determine the chemical composition of the sun and stars…
… Comte de (1816–82), French writer and anthropologist. His stated view that the races are innately unequal and that the white Aryan race is superior to all others later influenced the ideology and policies of the Nazis…
…(1908–90), US Supreme Court associate justice 1962–65. He served as US ambassador to the United Nations 1965–68 but resigned because he did not agree with the escalation of the Vietnam War…
… Comte de (1736–1813), Italian-born French mathematician. He is remembered for his proof that every positive integer can be expressed as a sum of at most four squares, and for his work on mechanics and its application to the description of planetary and lunar motion…
