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3535a947ddbdeb757f9bce3df37e72fe | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jesse-Lasky | Jesse Lasky | Jesse Lasky
With his brother-in-law Jesse Lasky, then a vaudeville producer, he cofounded the Jesse Lasky Feature Play Company. Their initial release was Cecil B. deMille’s Squaw Man (1913), one of the first full-length feature films made in Hollywood. In 1917 the company merged with Adolph Zukor’s Famous Players Film…
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07b0f33591490fd559fdccb07dfb8e56 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jesse-Ramsden | Jesse Ramsden | Jesse Ramsden
Jesse Ramsden, (born Oct. 6, 1735, Halifax, Yorkshire, Eng.—died Nov. 5, 1800, Brighton, Sussex), British pioneer in the design of precision tools.
Ramsden was apprenticed as a boy to a cloth worker, but in 1758 he apprenticed himself to a mathematical instrument maker. He went into business for himself in London in 1762. He designed dividing engines of great accuracy for both circles and straight lines and produced highly accurate sextants, theodolites, and vertical circles for astronomical observatories. He also built barometers, manometers, assay balances, and other instruments. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1786 and awarded the Copley Medal in 1795.
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e27a4ec6d917aca561f1e96c3e06a26e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jessica-Mitford | Jessica Mitford | Jessica Mitford
Jessica Mitford, in full Jessica Lucy Mitford, (born Sept. 11, 1917, Gloucestershire, England—died July 23, 1996, Oakland, Calif., U.S.), English-born writer and journalist noted for her witty and irreverent investigations of various aspects of American society.
The fifth daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, Mitford grew up in England with her brother and five sisters, one of whom was the novelist Nancy Mitford. She moved to the United States in 1939, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1944, and began to write in the late 1950s. Her first published book, the autobiography Hons and Rebels (1960; U.S. title Daughters and Rebels), is an entertaining account of her childhood, her eccentric family, and her early adult life. Mitford’s second book, The American Way of Death (1963), a caustic examination of unscrupulous practices in the American funeral industry, became a best-seller. Her long-standing interest in civil-rights cases found expression in the book The Trial of Dr. Spock (1969), an account of the famous pediatrician’s trial on conspiracy charges for antiwar activities during the Vietnam War. Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business (1973) is Mitford’s critical examination of the American prison system. In 1992 she published The American Way of Birth about the state of American obstetrical care. A Fine Old Conflict (1977) is mainly an account of her experiences as a member of the U.S. Communist Party in the 1940s and ’50s.
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0b8bfd1644e089add4e0c61f7c5c34ff | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jesus | Jesus | Jesus
Jesus, also called Jesus Christ, Jesus of Galilee, or Jesus of Nazareth, (born c. 6–4 bce, Bethlehem—died c. 30 ce, Jerusalem), religious leader revered in Christianity, one of the world’s major religions. He is regarded by most Christians as the Incarnation of God. The history of Christian reflection on the teachings and nature of Jesus is examined in the article Christology.
Ancient Jews usually had only one name, and, when greater specificity was needed, it was customary to add the father’s name or the place of origin. Thus, in his lifetime Jesus was called Jesus son of Joseph (Luke 4:22; John 1:45, 6:42), Jesus of Nazareth (Acts 10:38), or Jesus the Nazarene (Mark 1:24; Luke 24:19). After his death he came to be called Jesus Christ. Christ was not originally a name but a title derived from the Greek word christos, which translates the Hebrew term meshiah (Messiah), meaning “the anointed one.” This title indicates that Jesus’ followers believed him to be the anointed son of King David, whom some Jews expected to restore the fortunes of Israel. Passages such as Acts of the Apostles 2:36 show that some early Christian writers knew that the Christ was properly a title, but in many passages of the New Testament, including those in the letters of the Apostle Paul, the name and title are combined and used together as Jesus’ name: Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus (Romans 1:1; 3:24). Paul sometimes simply used Christ as Jesus’ name (e.g., Romans 5:6).
Although born in Bethlehem, according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus was a Galilean from Nazareth, a village near Sepphoris, one of the two major cities of Galilee (Tiberias was the other). He was born to Joseph and Mary sometime between 6 bce and shortly before the death of Herod the Great (Matthew 2; Luke 1:5) in 4 bce. According to Matthew and Luke, however, Joseph was only legally his father. They report that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived and that she “was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:18; cf. Luke 1:35). Joseph is said to have been a carpenter (Matthew 13:55)—that is, a craftsman who worked with his hands—and, according to Mark 6:3, Jesus also became a carpenter.
Luke (2:41–52) states that Jesus as a youth was precociously learned, but there is no other evidence of his childhood or early life. As a young adult, he went to be baptized by the prophet John the Baptist and shortly thereafter became an itinerant preacher and healer (Mark 1:2–28). In his mid-30s Jesus had a short public career, lasting perhaps less than one year, during which he attracted considerable attention. Sometime between 29 and 33 ce—possibly 30 ce—he went to observe Passover in Jerusalem, where his entrance, according to the Gospels, was triumphant and infused with eschatological significance. While there he was arrested, tried, and executed. His disciples became convinced that he rose from the dead and appeared to them. They converted others to belief in him, which eventually led to a new religion, Christianity.
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6265b9bbb0433e0313224b8f8c42f4e0 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jethro-Tull | Jethro Tull | Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull, (born 1674, Basildon, Berkshire, Eng.—died Feb. 21, 1741, Prosperous Farm, near Hungerford, Berkshire), English agronomist, agriculturist, writer, and inventor whose ideas helped form the basis of modern British agriculture.
Tull trained for the bar, to which he was called in 1699. But for the next 10 years he chose to operate his father’s farm in Oxfordshire, on which about 1701 he perfected a horse-drawn seed drill that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows. This was a notable advance over the usual practice of scattering the seeds by hand. In 1709 Tull bought a farm of his own in Berkshire. While later traveling in France and Italy, he was impressed by the cultivation methods in use in the vineyards, wherein the rows of earth between the vines had been pulverized. This reduced the need for manure and increased aeration and the access of water to and from plant roots, though Tull mistakenly believed that earth was the food of plants and that pulverization made it easier for plants to absorb it. He developed a horse-drawn hoe and successfully adopted the vineyard method to his farm. His success led to the publication of his The New Horse Houghing Husbandry: Or an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation (1731). Tull’s methods were initially subjected to violent attack, but they were eventually adopted by the large landowners and laid the basis for more modern and efficient British farming.
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52dfdcb6b8b9a887bdf97e9d329cd649 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jiancheng | Jiancheng | Jiancheng
…army under the crown prince Jiancheng at the beginning of 623. The prolonged resistance in Hebei and the comparatively harsh Tang conquest of the region were the beginning of resistance and hostility in the northeast that continued to some degree throughout the Tang dynasty.
…the succession: the crown prince Jiancheng and Li Shimin, the general who had played a large part in the wars of unification. Their rivalry, and the factional strife it generated, reached a peak in 625–626, when it appeared that Jiancheng was likely to succeed. In a military coup, Li Shimin…
…he and his elder brother, Li Jiancheng, were both Tang commanders. Li Shimin distinguished himself as a general and strategist and was largely responsible for the conquest of the eastern capital of Luoyang and the eastern plain. In 621 the emperor delegated to him control of both military and civil…
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eb168c1bf4c16d2259e85b7ecb6d4f6c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jiang-Zemin | Jiang Zemin | Jiang Zemin
Jiang Zemin, Wade-Giles romanization Chiang Tse-min, (born August 17, 1926, Yangzhou, Jiangsu province, China), Chinese official who was general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP; 1989–2002) and president of China (1993–2003).
Jiang joined the CCP in 1946 and graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University the following year with a degree in electrical engineering. He worked in several factories as an engineer before receiving further technical training in the Soviet Union about 1955. He subsequently headed technological research institutes in various parts of China. In 1980 Jiang became vice minister of the state commission on imports and exports. Two years later he became vice minister of the electronics industry and from 1983 to 1985 was its minister. He had meanwhile become a member of the Central Committee of the CCP in 1982. Named mayor of Shanghai in 1985, he joined the Political Bureau in 1987.
The Chinese leadership was reshuffled following the forceful suppression of demonstrations in Beijing and elsewhere in 1989, with Jiang succeeding Zhao Ziyang as general secretary of the CCP. He was a compromise choice who combined a commitment to continued free-market economic reforms with a determination to preserve the CCP’s monopoly on political power. Also in 1989 he succeeded Deng Xiaoping as chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission. In 1993 he became president of China, elected by the National People’s Congress.
With Deng’s death in 1997, Jiang became paramount leader and consolidated his power. He began to reduce the state’s ownership and control of some of China’s 300,000 industries, beginning with a privatization plan in 1997. During the late 1990s Jiang attempted to improve the country’s uneasy relationship with the United States. In 1997 he participated in the first U.S.-China summit in almost a decade, and at a follow-up meeting in 1998 he openly discussed his human rights record, which had been criticized by the West. In 2002 Jiang resigned as general secretary of the CCP and the following year stepped down as president after serving the maximum two five-year terms; Hu Jintao succeeded him in both positions. Jiang remained in charge of the Central Military Commission until stepping down in favour of Hu in September 2004.
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e27372fcd3d3d6b5e8c3c2d96f57d8bc | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jianwen | Jianwen | Jianwen
Jianwen, Wade-Giles romanization Chien-wen, personal name (xingming) Zhu Yunwen, posthumous name (shi) Huidi, (born Dec. 5, 1377, China—died July 13, 1402?, Nanjing), reign name (nianhao) of the second emperor of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), under whose brief reign (1398–1402) a civil war nearly destroyed the newly founded dynasty.
Succeeding to the throne in 1398, Jianwen continued the efforts of his predecessor to erase the Mongol legacies of the previous Yuan dynasty (1206–1368) and to encourage the cultural, intellectual, and technological advances for which the Ming dynasty was to become noted. He met his downfall when he tried to reassert central control over several princedoms within the empire that were ruled by his uncles. This effort provoked a rebellion by his uncle the prince of Yan, whose troops overwhelmed the capital in 1402 and established him as the Yongle emperor (reigned 1402–24); the defeated Jianwen vanished at the time his palace was burned. He was presumed to have died in the fire, but legend recounts that he survived and lived for nearly 40 more years as a wandering monk.
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1dc5c0ae12244786295e26084cf90d70 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jigme-Khesar-Namgyal-Wangchuk | Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk | Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk
…throne to his Oxford-educated son, Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuk. This event catalyzed the country’s transition to a fully democratic government. Over the next year the public was trained in the democratic process through a mock vote, and the country’s first official elections—for seats in the National Council, the upper house…
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b158a268ee40a225e0b64c051b2ab538 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jill-Abramson | Jill Abramson | Jill Abramson
Jill Abramson, in full Jill Ellen Abramson, (born March 19, 1954, New York City, New York, U.S.), American journalist who was the first female executive editor (2011–14) of The New York Times.
Abramson was raised in Manhattan, the daughter of a textile importer and his wife. She attended Harvard University, graduating in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in history and literature. While a student, Abramson freelanced for Time magazine, and she reported on the 1976 presidential election for the publication following her graduation. After a stint on Virginia Democrat Henry Howell’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign, she turned to political ad writing. Abramson then worked briefly for the election unit of NBC News—for which she covered the 1980 presidential election—before becoming an investigative reporter at the newly created magazine The American Lawyer in 1981. In 1986 she accepted a position as editor in chief of Legal Times magazine, which had just been purchased by The American Lawyer owner Steven Brill. Abramson remained there until 1988, when she was hired as a reporter for the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal. She covered the White House for the Journal and later became deputy Washington bureau chief.
In 1997 Abramson moved to the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where she was enterprise editor. She was appointed Washington editor two years later, and in 2000 she became the Washington bureau chief for the paper. She weathered frequent contretemps with Howell Raines, then the paper’s executive editor, over her editorial philosophy and successfully evaded his attempt to reassign her to the Times book review. After Raines’s 2003 ouster in the wake of a plagiarism scandal at the Times, his replacement, Bill Keller, made Abramson managing editor of the paper, and in September of that year she returned to New York City. Her performance in Washington was scrutinized in 2005, when it emerged that reporter Judith Miller, who was at the time attached to the Washington bureau, had inaccurately reported on the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq during the lead-up to the 2003 declaration of war on that country. However, Abramson emerged largely unscathed from the controversy. In May 2010 she took a six-month sabbatical to oversee the digital operations of the Times, and in September 2011 she succeeded Keller as executive editor. Abramson was fired in May 2014. The paper cited concerns about her management style, though some observers suggested that her complaints about disparities between her compensation package and that of her male predecessor likely factored into the decision. She was replaced by managing editor Dean Baquet, who was the first African American to hold the post.
Abramson expanded several of her articles into books. Where They Are Now: The Story of the Women of Harvard Law, 1974 (1986; cowritten with Barbara Franklin) charts the first decade in the careers of 71 female Harvard Law alumni. Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (1994; cowritten with Jane Mayer) covers the controversial confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991, focusing on Republican efforts to downplay allegations of sexual harassment against him. She experimented with lighter fare in The Puppy Diaries: Raising a Dog Named Scout (2011), a compilation of columns she had written for the Times about the first year of her life with a golden retriever. In 2019 Abramson published Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts, which attracted controversy over accusations of plagiarism.
Abramson taught in various capacities at Princeton (2000–01) and Yale (2007–11) universities. From 2014 she was a visiting professor at Harvard. Abramson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001.
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2233e9f4387159f8dc2cf29ca2cd59b9 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jill-Ker-Conway | Jill Ker Conway | Jill Ker Conway
Jill Ker Conway, née Jill Ker, (born October 9, 1934, Hillston, New South Wales, Australia—died June 1, 2018, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.), Australian-born American scholar, the first woman president of Smith College (1975–85), whose research as a historian focused on the role of feminism in American history.
Jill Ker grew up in Coorain, a remote grasslands locale where her parents ran a sheep ranch. After her father’s unexpected death, her mother moved the family to Sydney. Ker was educated at Abbotsleigh, a private girls’ school, and at the University of Sydney, where she took an honours degree in history in 1958. Two years later, after her rejection by the Australian foreign service on the basis of her sex, she immigrated to the United States for graduate work.
While earning her doctorate at Harvard University (Ph.D., 1969), she met and married John Conway. The Conways then moved to Toronto. There she taught 19th- and 20th-century American history at the University of Toronto, where she also became one of five vice presidents of the university. In 1975 Conway became the first woman president of Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, a position she held for a decade. In 1985 she became a visiting scholar and professor in the Science, Technology, and Society program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Conway’s work on feminism and history yielded such books as The Female Experience in 18th- and 19th-Century America (1982) and Women Reformers and American Culture (1987). After editing two anthologies (1992, 1996) of autobiographical writing by women, she explored the memoir as a literary form in When Memory Speaks: Reflections on Autobiography (1998). Conway wrote her own life story in The Road from Coorain (1989), which was adapted for television (2001); True North (1994); and A Woman’s Education (2001). She was also the author of Felipe the Flamingo (2006), a children’s book. Conway received the National Humanities Medal in 2013.
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e1c27e0eaaa4fe00ecf910e47efaff59 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Bakker | Jim Bakker | Jim Bakker
…Swaggart publicly accused fellow televangelist Jim Bakker of immoral sexual behaviour. This denunciation, which some saw as a move by Swaggart to take over Bakker’s empire, precipitated a closer look at Swaggart’s own life, leading to the revelation that he had performed voyeuristic acts with a female prostitute. Indeed, another…
…reduced sentence for disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker, and the following year he represented real estate mogul Leona Helmsley in her appeal of her conviction for tax evasion. Perhaps most famously, he was part of the team that successfully defended former football star O.J. Simpson in his 1995 trial for the…
…network of the disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker. Falwell advocated a conservative Christian faith and condemned what he perceived as the sinfulness and godlessness of contemporary society. A segregationist in his early years, he later abandoned that view. He opposed abortion, feminism, gay rights, and other causes associated with the social…
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711d0207e90a035ef6aebe5d53e261e7 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Craig | Jim Craig | Jim Craig
Jim Craig, byname of James Downey Craig, (born May 31, 1957, North Easton, Massachusetts, U.S.), American ice hockey goaltender who was part of the U.S. hockey team that won the gold medal at the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, New York, U.S. The American victory in the hockey tournament, known as the “miracle on ice,” was one of the greatest surprises in the history of the Olympics, and Craig, who started every game in goal, was a leading figure in the team’s success.
The U.S. squad was ranked 7th out of 12 teams at the beginning of the games. The Soviet hockey team, considered the best in the world, was the clear favourite. They had beaten a National Hockey League (NHL) All-Star team the previous year and crushed the American team 10–3 in an exhibition game a week before the Olympics. In fact, the U.S.S.R. was virtually unbeatable in Olympic competition between 1956 and 1992 (in 1992 athletes from the former Soviet republics competed together as the Unified Team). The only teams to break the Soviet hold on the gold medal were the American teams of 1960 and 1980, when the Winter Olympics were held in the United States.
Craig, an All-American goalie at Boston University before joining the U.S. ice hockey team, played nearly every minute of every game. He led the U.S. team through a surprising series of victories in the first round, typically giving up an early goal or two but then shutting out the opponents in the final period. The U.S. team made it to a semifinal game against the Soviets, where Craig made 39 saves and fought off a heavy barrage of shots in the game’s final minutes. The Americans beat the Soviet team 4–3 and went on to beat Finland 4–2 in the championship game. One of the enduring images of the 1980 Games was of Craig, wrapped in the American flag, searching the stands for his widowed father in order to share the gold-medal-winning victory.
Following the Olympics, Craig was recruited by the NHL’s Atlanta Flames. Media pressure and injuries hurt his performance, however, and his professional career ended in 1984, after only 30 games with Atlanta, the Boston Bruins, and the Minnesota North Stars.
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60d9392be3c7658651b426dec48052c4 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-DeMint | Jim DeMint | Jim DeMint
When James DeMint resigned in 2013, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley appointed Scott to fill his Senate seat. Scott won a special election in 2014 to complete the term.
Jim DeMint of South Carolina supported Tea Party candidates from within the Republican establishment. The diffuse collection of groups and individuals who made up the Tea Party movement was unique in the history of American populism, as it seemed to draw strength from its ability…
In December 2012 DeMint, one of the most visible faces of the Tea Party in the U.S. Senate, stepped down to become president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Some analysts opined that the Tea Party appeared to be a spent force, and in February 2013…
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98b20fbdbb37ce3a75e9469ba1b1110e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Inhofe | Jim Inhofe | Jim Inhofe
Jim Inhofe, in full James Mountain Inhofe, (born November 17, 1934, Des Moines, Iowa, U.S.), American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 1994 and began representing Oklahoma in that body later that year. He previously served as mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma (1978–84), and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1987–94).
Although he was born in Iowa, Inhofe grew up in Tulsa. After a stint in the U.S. Army (1957–58), he went into business, working as a land developer, an aviation executive, and an insurance executive, including a period as president of the now-defunct Quaker Life Insurance Company. During that time he married (1959) Kay Kirkpatrick, and the couple later had four children. While pursuing various work opportunities, Inhofe also was a member of the state legislature, serving in the House of Representatives (1967–69) and the Senate (1969–77). He entered college in his mid-30s and graduated from the University of Tulsa with a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1973. The following year he ran for governor of the state but lost. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives, Inhofe became mayor of Tulsa in 1978. He was reelected twice before leaving office in 1984. Two years later he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served from 1987 to 1994. He was a noteworthy opponent of Pres. Ronald Reagan’s 1987 budget, which raised taxes after many earlier protestations that tax increases were not forthcoming while at the same time slightly reducing military spending.
In 1994 Inhofe ran for the U.S. Senate in a special election and won, taking office later that year. While in Congress, Inhofe established himself as a conservative, consistently voting to the farthest right of the Republican Party. An outspoken skeptic of climate change, Inhofe wrote The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future (2012), and he compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo. On social issues, he was a vocal opponent of marriage equality and abortion. Inhofe came under criticism for voting against funding federal disaster-relief efforts in the aftermath of hurricanes along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts while voting for federal relief for victims of natural disasters in his own state.
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a7fed60ec3619cc30e27a97c1a84fd0b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Jarmusch | Jim Jarmusch | Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch, (born January 22, 1953, Akron, Ohio, U.S.), American director and screenwriter whose darkly humorous tone and transcendence of genre conventions established him as a major independent filmmaker.
Jarmusch studied at Columbia University and at New York University Film School, where he directed his first feature-length film, Permanent Vacation (1980; released 1986). His next movie, Stranger than Paradise (1984), established his reputation as a new voice in independent cinema. Jarmusch continued to earn acclaim for films such as the offbeat comedies Down by Law (1986), Mystery Train (1989), and Night on Earth (1992).
Jarmusch’s later movies included Dead Man (1995), in which he offered his own take on the western; Year of the Horse (1997), a rock concert documentary of Neil Young and Crazy Horse; and Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999). Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) consisted of a collection of brief exchanges between various well-known actors and musicians as they smoked and drank coffee. Jarmusch won the Grand Prix at the 2005 Cannes film festival for Broken Flowers (2005), a dramedy about a man who visits former girlfriends after receiving an anonymous letter telling him he has a son. The Limits of Control (2009) comprised a series of surreal interludes between an assassin and his various contacts, and Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) was an atmospheric vampire thriller.
Jarmusch chronicled the punk band Iggy and the Stooges in the documentary Gimme Danger (2016). That year he also wrote and directed Paterson, which presents a week in the life of a bus driver. The contemplative dramedy received widespread acclaim. Jarmusch then offered his wry take on the zombie movie genre with The Dead Don’t Die (2019).
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41ae1f6a7c44cd2f716bb9956f0a6e45 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Kelly | Jim Kelly | Jim Kelly
The Bills drafted quarterback Jim Kelly in the first round of the 1983 NFL draft. Kelly instead signed to play in the upstart United States Football League (USFL), and Buffalo posted league-worst 2–14 records in both 1984 and 1985. After the USFL folded in 1986, Kelly joined the Bills,…
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40d63fa07b5704b01e36a78c5708276d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Lovell | Jim Lovell | Jim Lovell
Jim Lovell, byname of James Arthur Lovell, Jr., (born March 25, 1928, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.), U.S. astronaut of the Gemini and Apollo space programs, commander of the nearly disastrous Apollo 13 flight to the Moon in 1970.
Lovell, a graduate (1952) of the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland, became a test pilot. He was serving as a flight instructor and safety officer at the time (1963) he was selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the crewed space program. Lovell accompanied Frank Borman on the record-breaking 14-day flight of Gemini 7. Launched December 4, 1965, Gemini 7 was joined in space by Gemini 6, launched 11 days later and crewed by Walter M. Schirra, Jr., and Thomas P. Stafford, for the first successful space rendezvous. Lovell joined Edwin E. (“Buzz”) Aldrin for the last flight of the Gemini series, Gemini 12, which was launched on November 11, 1966, and remained in orbit for four days.
Apollo 8 was launched on December 21, 1968, and carried Lovell, Borman, and William Anders on the first crewed flight around the Moon. This flight was the first of three preparatory to the Moon landing of Apollo 11. Apollo 13, with astronauts Fred W. Haise, John L. Swigert, Jr., and Lovell aboard, lifted off on April 11, 1970, headed for the Fra Mauro Hills on the Moon. On April 13, approximately 205,000 miles (330,000 km) from Earth, an explosion ruptured an oxygen tank in the service module. The resulting shortage of power and oxygen forced the abandonment of the Moon mission. Apollo 13’s crew changed course to swing once around the Moon and then return to Earth. With the successful return of Apollo 13 on April 17, Lovell had completed more than 715 hours of space travel.
Lovell remained in NASA, and in 1971 he became a deputy director of the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He retired from the navy and the space program in 1973 but remained in Houston as a corporation executive until his retirement in 1991. He later moved to Illinois and opened a successful restaurant in Lake Forest.
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353f8a29d61001dc55b855d9ef78d997 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-McCarty | Jim McCarty | Jim McCarty
November 11, 1946, London), drummer Jim McCarty (b. July 25, 1943, Liverpool, Merseyside), bassist Paul Samwell-Smith (b. May 8, 1943, London), and guitarist Anthony (“Top”) Topham (b., England). Later members were Jeff Beck (b. June 24, 1944, Wallington, Surrey) and Jimmy Page (b. January 9, 1944, Heston, Middlesex).
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a7209a55830008243db7bdcbcf671839 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Steranko | Jim Steranko | Jim Steranko
In 1967 Jim Steranko began to write and draw stories featuring secret agent Nick Fury in the anthology book Strange Tales. Steranko was influenced in his work by James Bond films and the psychedelic and Op art movements, and the resulting stories melded groundbreaking visuals with equally…
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4053bfcf4c64f53e561327298360ed8c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Thorpe-American-athlete | Jim Thorpe | Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe, byname of James Francis Thorpe, (born May 28, 1888, near Prague, Indian Territory [now in Oklahoma], U.S.—died March 28, 1953, Lomita, California), one of the most accomplished all-around athletes in history who in 1950 was selected by American sportswriters and broadcasters as the greatest American athlete and the greatest gridiron football player of the first half of the 20th century.
Predominantly of American Indian (Sauk and Fox) descent, Thorpe attended Haskell Indian School in Lawrence, Kansas, and Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Indian Industrial School. While playing football for Carlisle under coach Pop Warner, he was chosen as halfback on Walter Camp’s All-America teams in 1911 and 1912. He was a marvel of speed, power, kicking, and all-around ability. Also in 1912 Thorpe won the decathlon and the pentathlon by wide margins at the Olympic Games in Stockholm, but in 1913 an investigation by the Amateur Athletic Union showed that he had played semiprofessional baseball in 1909 and 1910, which should have disqualified him from Olympic competition. He was subsequently deprived of his gold medals.
From 1913 through 1919, Thorpe was an outfielder for the New York, Cincinnati (Ohio), and Boston baseball teams in the National League. He was more successful as one of the early stars of American professional football from 1919 through 1926. He spent two seasons (1922–23) with the Oorang Indians, whose owner attracted crowds by having Thorpe and his teammates dress up and perform “Indian” tricks before games and at halftime. In 1920–21 he served as the first president of the American Professional Football Association (later the National Football League [NFL]). He also excelled in such diverse sports as basketball, boxing, lacrosse, swimming, and hockey. In his later years, even as he was celebrated in magazine and newspaper articles as one of the greatest athletes of all time, alcoholism and inability to adjust to employment outside sports reduced Thorpe to near poverty. The 1951 film biography of his life, titled Jim Thorpe—All American and starring Burt Lancaster, transformed his story into uplifting melodrama, with the fallen hero rescued by his old coach Pop Warner.
In 1954, after his death, the communities of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, merged to form the borough of Jim Thorpe. From 1955 the Jim Thorpe Trophy was awarded annually to the most valuable player in the NFL. In 1973 the Amateur Athletic Union restored his amateur status, but the International Olympic Committee did not recognize his amateur status until 1982. Thorpe was subsequently restored as a “cowinner” of the decathlon and pentathlon of the 1912 Olympic Games (along with the second-place finishers in those events). His Olympic gold medals were restored to his family in 1983.
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62fe4e7a83b05decfd9024f985a2755f | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jimi-Hendrix | Jimi Hendrix | Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix, byname of James Marshall Hendrix, originally John Allen Hendrix, (born November 27, 1942, Seattle, Washington, U.S.—died September 18, 1970, London, England), American rock guitarist, singer, and composer who fused American traditions of blues, jazz, rock, and soul with techniques of British avant-garde rock to redefine the electric guitar in his own image.
Though his active career as a featured artist lasted a mere four years, Hendrix altered the course of popular music and became one of the most successful and influential musicians of his era. An instrumentalist who radically redefined the expressive potential and sonic palette of the electric guitar, he was the composer of a classic repertoire of songs ranging from ferocious rockers to delicate, complex ballads. He also was the most charismatic in-concert performer of his generation. Moreover, he was a visionary who collapsed the genre boundaries of rock, soul, blues, and jazz and an iconic figure whose appeal linked the concerns of white hippies and black revolutionaries by clothing black anger in the colourful costumes of London’s Carnaby Street.
A former paratrooper whose honourable medical discharge exempted him from service in the Vietnam War, Hendrix spent the early 1960s working as a freelance accompanist for a variety of musicians, both famous and obscure. His unorthodox style and penchant for playing at high volume, however, limited him to subsistence-level work until he was discovered in a small New York City club and brought to England in September 1966. Performing alongside two British musicians, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, he stunned London’s clubland with his instrumental virtuosity and extroverted showmanship, numbering members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who among his admirers. It proved a lot easier for him to learn their tricks than it was for them to learn his.
Hendrix had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the musical roots on which the cutting-edge rock of his time was based, but, thanks to his years on the road with the likes of Little Richard and the Isley Brothers, he also had hands-on experience of the cultural and social worlds in which those roots had developed and a great admiration for the work of Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Yardbirds. Speedily adapting the current musical and sartorial fashions of late 1966 London to his own needs, he was soon able not only to match the likes of the Who at their own high-volume, guitar-smashing game but also to top them with what rapidly became the hottest-ticket show in town.
By November his band, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, had their first Top Ten single, “Hey Joe.” Two more hits, “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary,” followed before their first album, Are You Experienced?, was released in the summer of 1967, when it was second in impact only to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Its immediate successor, Axis: Bold as Love, followed that December. On Paul McCartney’s recommendation, Hendrix was flown to California for a scene-stealing appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival, which rendered him a sensation in his homeland less than a year after his departure.
Relocating back to the United States in 1968, he enjoyed further acclaim with the sprawling, panoramic double album Electric Ladyland, but the second half of his career proved frustrating. Legal complications from an old contract predating his British sojourn froze his recording royalties, necessitating constant touring to pay his bills; and his audiences were reluctant to allow him to progress beyond the musical blueprint of his earliest successes. He was on the verge of solving both these problems when he died of an overdose of barbiturates, leaving behind a massive stockpile of works-in-progress that were eventually edited and completed by others.
For Hendrix, the thunderous drama of his hard rock band was but a fraction of what he aspired to: he wanted to compose more complex music for larger ensembles, rather than simply to improvise endlessly in front of a rhythm section for audiences waiting for him to smash or burn his guitar. Nevertheless, in his all-too-brief career, he managed to combine and extend the soaring improvisational transcendence of John Coltrane, the rhythmic virtuosity of James Brown, the bluesy intimacy of John Lee Hooker, the lyrical aesthetic of Bob Dylan, the bare-knuckle onstage aggression of the Who, and the hallucinatory studio fantasias of the Beatles. Hendrix’s work provides a continuing source of inspiration to successive generations of musicians to whom he remains a touchstone for emotional honesty, technological innovation, and an all-inclusive vision of cultural and social brotherhood. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
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619354a6452011a149c9d8ce0af2113f | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jimmy-Blanton | Jimmy Blanton | Jimmy Blanton
Jimmy Blanton, byname of James Blanton, (born October 1918, Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.—died July 30, 1942, Monrovia, California), American jazz musician whose innovative string bass techniques and concepts, displayed during his two years in the Duke Ellington band, made him by far the major influence on subsequent jazz bassists for several decades.
While based in St. Louis, Blanton played in the Jeter-Pillars and Fate Marable bands, both notable “territory bands” (i.e., those in the South, Southwest, and Midwest), before Ellington hired him in 1939. He was a key figure in Ellington’s greatest period. His mobile swing and his remarkably full, resonant, pizzicato tones were the band’s foundation. His original technique permitted him an unprecedented rhythmic variety on his instrument, allowing him to play melodic phrasing instead of conventional, swing-era “walking” (i.e., 4/4) metre lines in solos; his harmonies, too, were considered advanced for the swing era.
In 1939–40 Ellington recorded a series of piano and bass duets with Blanton, including “Pitter Panther Patter,” “Sophisticated Lady,” and “Body and Soul.” The bassist was also featured in classic Ellington band recordings such as “Jack the Bear” and “Ko-Ko”; altogether he made more than 130 recordings with Ellington, together with other recordings led by Ellington sidemen. In 1941, ill from tuberculosis, he entered a California sanitorium, ending a brief, brilliant career.
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5e036721949cf6d487254f85db5a7dad | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jimmy-Connors | Jimmy Connors | Jimmy Connors
Jimmy Connors, byname of James Scott Connors, (born September 2, 1952, East St. Louis, Illinois, U.S.), American professional tennis player who was one of the leading competitors in the 1970s and early ’80s and was known for his intensity and aggressive play. During his career he won 109 singles championships and was ranked number one in the world for 160 consecutive weeks.
The left-handed Connors learned to play tennis from his mother at an early age, and when he was eight years old he competed in the U.S. boys’ championship. A former student at the University of California at Los Angeles, he joined team tennis in 1972.
In 1974 he won three of the Grand Slam tournaments (U.S. Open, Australian Open, and Wimbledon) but was barred from the fourth, the French Open. He sued the Association of Tennis Professionals, alleging that they illegally excluded him from the French event, but he dropped his lawsuit after his loss to Arthur Ashe for the 1975 Wimbledon championship. He won the U.S. singles titles in 1976 and 1978 against Björn Borg and in 1982 and 1983 against Ivan Lendl. Connors also won the indoor championship five times (1973–75, 1978, and 1979), the Wimbledon and U.S. doubles (with Ilie Nastase in 1975), and the 1982 Wimbledon singles. He was also a member of the U.S. Davis Cup squad in 1976, 1981, and 1984.
Although he failed to win a major singles championship after his success at the U.S. Open in 1983, he continued to play in the 1990s. Hampered by an ailing left wrist and having lost the few matches he played in 1990, Connors dropped below 900 in the world rankings. After undergoing surgery, he came back to make the semifinals at the U.S. Open in 1991 after winning a dramatic five-set match against Aaron Krickstein in the fourth round on his 39th birthday.
Connors was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1998. He kept active in the sport, serving as a television commentator. From 2006 to 2008 he coached American player Andy Roddick. Connors wrote several books, including Jimmy Connors: How to Play Tougher Tennis (1986; written with Robert J. LaMarche), Don’t Count Yourself Out!: Staying Fit After 35 with Jimmy Connors (1992; written with Neil Gordon and Catherine McEvily Harris), and the memoir The Outsider (2013).
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fc0d5bbaa8846859c7876e5fe23a3dda | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jimmy-Hoffa | Jimmy Hoffa | Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa, in full James Riddle Hoffa, (born February 14, 1913, Brazil, Indiana, U.S.—disappeared July 30, 1975, Bloomfield Hills, near Detroit, Michigan), American labour leader who served as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1957 to 1971 and was one of the most controversial labour organizers of his time.
The son of an Indiana coal miner who died when Hoffa was seven, Hoffa moved with his family to Detroit in 1924. He left school at age 14, worked as a stock boy and warehouseman for several years, and began his union-organizing activities in the 1930s. Initially the business agent for Local 299 in Detroit, Hoffa by 1940 had become chairman of the Central States Drivers Council and by 1942 president of the Michigan Conference of Teamsters. In 1952 he was elected an international vice president of the Teamsters, and five years later he succeeded Dave Beck as international president.
Known throughout the trucking industry as a tough and knowledgeable bargainer, Hoffa successfully centralized administration and bargaining in the international office of the union. He also played a key role in the creation of the first national freight-hauling agreement. His efforts helped make the Teamsters the largest labour union in the United States.
Known to have long associated with organized crime figures, Hoffa nevertheless survived a series of governmental prosecutions until 1967, when he entered the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to begin a 13-year sentence for jury tampering, fraud, and conspiracy. Hoffa refused to resign as president of the Teamsters while in prison and kept his position until 1971. U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon commuted Hoffa’s sentence in December 1971, stipulating that he could not engage in any union activity until 1980. Hoffa, however, fought the restriction in court and was widely believed to have covertly continued his efforts to reestablish a union position.
On July 30, 1975, he disappeared from a restaurant in suburban Detroit under circumstances that have never been fully determined. He was said to have had an appointment at the restaurant with Anthony Provenzano, a New Jersey Teamsters official and former Mafia figure, and Anthony Giacalone, a Detroit mobster; both later denied having encountered Hoffa, who was never seen again. He was legally declared “presumed dead” in 1982.
James P. Hoffa, Jimmy Hoffa’s son, was sworn in as general president of the Teamsters on May 1, 1999, after a bitter election campaign culminated in his defeat of Ron Carey, a longtime critic of Jimmy Hoffa.
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8a6da81fbf13c323cc019ce9c024cf74 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jimmy-Swaggart | Jimmy Swaggart | Jimmy Swaggart
Jimmy Swaggart, in full Jimmy Lee Swaggart, (born March 15, 1935, Ferriday, Louisiana, U.S.), American televangelist and gospel music performer. He was defrocked by the Assemblies of God in 1988 after a sex scandal involving prostitutes.
Swaggart’s father was a sharecropper before becoming a Pentecostal preacher in the Assemblies of God denomination in the 1950s, and Swaggart was immersed in the church’s culture from his youth. His cousins Jerry Lee Lewis, a rock and roll pioneer, and Mickey Gilley, a country music singer, inspired him to attempt a career in music. However, he continued to assist with his parents’ ministry, and in 1958 he became a full-time evangelist with his own ministry. In 1961 he was ordained by the Assemblies of God.
Swaggart recorded several gospel albums in the 1960s. In 1969 he began The Camp Meeting Hour, a radio show featuring gospel music and preaching that was soon broadcast nationally. His continued success as a gospel music artist enabled him to launch a local television ministry, which began in 1975 with a weekly program. Swaggart soon garnered a large viewing audience across the country; by the mid-1980s his weekly telecasts reached approximately two million households in the United States, making him one of the most popular and successful televangelists of the era.
In 1987 Swaggart publicly accused fellow televangelist Jim Bakker of immoral sexual behaviour. This denunciation, which some saw as a move by Swaggart to take over Bakker’s empire, precipitated a closer look at Swaggart’s own life, leading to the revelation that he had performed voyeuristic acts with a female prostitute. Indeed, another rival televangelist, Marvin Gorman, whom Swaggart had also accused of having one or more extramarital affairs and who was subsequently defrocked, provided photographs of Swaggart at a Baton Rouge motel with a local prostitute. Despite his tearful on-air apology in February 1988, Swaggart was defrocked by the Assemblies of God in April but continued to act as an independent Pentecostal preacher. In October 1991 police in Indio, California, found Swaggart in the company of a prostitute after stopping him for a traffic violation. During that period he lost a $10 million defamation lawsuit for the accusations of sexual misconduct he had lodged against Gorman; the parties later settled out of court for $1.85 million. After those scandals, Swaggart turned control of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, Inc., over to his son, Donnie.
Swaggart made a comeback in 1995 with the launching of the SonLife Radio Network on national radio stations and later internationally on the Internet. His ministry through a monthly magazine, The Evangelist, and through an interdenominational church known as the Family Worship Center of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, continued into the 21st century. In 2009 Jimmy Swaggart Ministries launched the SonLife Broadcasting Network, an international Christian television network to air both live and prerecorded programs.
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32296068bd99c6bf052e334a10c1cc22 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jingtai | Jingtai | Jingtai
Jingtai, Wade-Giles romanization Ching-t’ai, personal name (xingming) Zhu Qiyu, posthumous name (shi) Chengliwang, (born 1428, China—died 1457, Beijing), reign name (nianhao) of the seventh emperor (reigned 1449–57) of the Ming dynasty. He ascended to the throne after his brother, the Zhengtong emperor, was captured while leading the imperial forces against the Oryat (western Mongol) leader Esen Taiji in 1449. When Esen tried to take advantage of his victory and attack the capital at Beijing, Jingtai’s defense minister, Yu Qian, drove Esen’s forces back into Mongolia. In 1450 Esen released the abducted former emperor.
Although his brother returned to China, Jingtai continued to reign. He caused much resentment by setting up his own son, rather than his nephew, as heir apparent. Partly because of this indiscretion, when he grew ill and lay dying in 1457 his brother, with the aid of a group of palace eunuchs, reascended the throne and disposed of the dying Jingtai.
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cb9153fe25f93f0d17939dfb98f5e4e4 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jivatram-Bhagwandas-Kripalani | Jivatram Bhagwandas Kripalani | Jivatram Bhagwandas Kripalani
Jivatram Bhagwandas Kripalani, also called Acharya Kripalani, (born November 11, 1888, Hyderabad, India [now in Pakistan]—died March 19, 1982, Ahmadabad), prominent Indian educator, social activist, and politician in both pre- and post-independence India, who was a close associate of Mohandas K. Gandhi and a longtime supporter of his ideology. He was a leading figure in the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) during the 1930s and ’40s and later was a founder of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP).
Kripalani was born in Hyderabad (now in Sindh province, Pakistan) and was raised in the Sindh and Gujarat regions in a middle-class Hindu family. His father was a minor government official. He earned a master’s degree in history and economics from Fergusson College in Pune. In 1912 he embarked on a teaching career.
As a student, Kripalani had participated in social and political activism. It was during his time as a teacher that he first encountered Gandhi, and he was associated with Gandhi by 1917, after Gandhi had taken up the cause of indigo workers in Gujarat. Kripalani subsequently joined the Congress Party and worked on Gandhi’s ashrams (religious retreats) in Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Bihar. From 1922 to 1927 he was the principal of Gujarat Vidyapith in Ahmadabad, a school founded by Gandhi, and it was during his tenure there that he acquired the nickname Acharya (“Teacher”). After 1920 Kripalani also participated in many of the acts of civil disobedience associated with Indian opposition to British rule, in the process earning several prison terms.
Kripalani rose to become a senior leader within Congress. His first major post was as general secretary of the All India Congress Committee in 1928–29, and from 1934 to 1945 he served as general secretary of the party. In 1946 he was elected president of the party, but his tenure in that post was controversial. Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, objected to the high level of involvement that Kripalani wanted the party to play in governing the country. In My Times, his autobiography published posthumously in 2004, Kripalani strongly condemned nearly the entire Congress leadership—Gandhi being one of the few exceptions—for allowing a united India to be partitioned in 1947. Late that year he resigned as party president..
While that drama was unfolding, he was a member (1946–47) of India’s interim government and (1946–51) of the Constituent Assembly that drafted the country’s new constitution.. In 1951 Kripalani resigned from Congress, a year after he was defeated in a bid to become president of the party again, and he helped form the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party that in 1952 became the core of the Praja Socialist Party (PSP); he later resigned from the PSP. Also in 1951 he was elected to the Lok Sabha (the lower chamber of the Indian parliament) and won reelection to that chamber in 1957, 1963, and 1967. His only electoral defeats came in 1962, when he lost his seat to V.K. Krishna Menon (then minister of defense), and in 1971, his last bid for public office.
Kripalani was an avowed follower of Gandhi. After Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, he took upon himself the task of standard bearer for Gandhian principles in a world he thought was losing respect for idealism. Kripalani later included in his autobiography this passage that he had once written to Gandhi, “I cannot live in the light of the doctrines I have learnt from you. But intellectually I am convinced that humanity’s salvation lies that way.” He long championed social and environmental causes and became a spiritual leader of the socialists in India.
Kripalani was a harsh critic of both Nehru and Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi. He opposed Nehru’s policies, which he thought went against the Gandhian ideal of village republics, and he strongly denounced Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian rule as prime minister. In 1972–73 he, Jaya Prakash (or Jayaprakash) Narayan, and other socialist leaders toured the country urging nonviolent protest and civil disobedience against Indira Gandhi’s government. Kripalani was among the first lot of political leaders to be arrested in June 1975 after she had imposed a nationwide state of emergency, but because of his prominence he was only briefly held in custody. Kripalani was the author of several books, including Gandhi: His Life and Thought (1970).
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a89316bca5b5e5bcd489da7f2af63996 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jo-van-Ammers-Kuller | Jo van Ammers-Küller | Jo van Ammers-Küller
Jo van Ammers-Küller, in full Johanna Van Ammers-küller, (born Aug. 13, 1884, Noordeloos, Neth.—died Jan. 23, 1966, Bakel), Dutch writer best known for her historical novels.
Van Ammers-Küller began her writing career as a playwright. Her first successful novels, Het huis der vreugden (1922; The House of Joy) and Jenny Huysten (1923; Jenny Huysten’s Career), deal with life in and around the theatre and draw on her experiences as a dramatist in London from 1912 to 1921. Her most successful novel, De opstandigen (1925; The Rebel Generation), presents the struggle of three generations of women in the Coornvelt family for equality with men and against the strictures of their Calvinist environment.
With the publication and translation of De opstandigen, van Ammers-Küller’s reputation grew, and she was invited to lecture in London and in Hamburg, Ger. The family saga was a form that particularly suited van Ammers-Küller, and she wrote several more historical novels, including the trilogy Heren, knechten, en vrouwen (1934–38, retitled De Tavelincks; The House of Tavelinck), the story of an aristocratic family of Amsterdam set from 1778 to 1815; Elzelina (1940), the story of a Dutch woman set during the period from 1776 to 1845; and Ma (1943), a family chronicle spanning the years 1871 to 1901.
Van Ammers-Küller’s pro-German stand during World War II contributed to the waning of her popularity after the war.
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c89fe02a4890917971cbf8fdd488573b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joachim-I-Nestor | Joachim I Nestor | Joachim I Nestor
Joachim I Nestor, (born Feb. 24, 1484—died July 11, 1535, Kölln an der Spree, Brandenburg), elector of Brandenburg, an opponent of the Habsburg emperors, yet a devout Roman Catholic who prevented the spread of Protestantism in his lands during his lifetime.
Joachim at first supported Francis I of France at the imperial election of 1519 and at one point even hoped to attain the title himself, but he finally backed Charles I of Spain, who became Charles V. Relations between the Emperor and the Elector were never cordial, however, for Joachim remained a French sympathizer. In domestic affairs, he reformed the legal code and settled his warlike nobles by granting them lands and positions. Interested in humanistic studies, he founded a university at Frankfurt an der Oder in 1506. Joachim remained an implacable enemy of the Reformation and even forced his sons, who sympathized with the reformers, to pledge that Brandenburg would remain Catholic after his death. In his will, he divided Brandenburg between his two sons.
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aca0ecd49bcba4673abdb8cfa8eca202 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Bennett | Joan Bennett | Joan Bennett
Joan Bennett, in full Joan Geraldine Bennett, (born Feb. 27, 1910, Palisades, N.J., U.S.—died Dec. 7, 1990, Scarsdale, N.Y.), versatile American film actress.
The daughter of actor Richard Bennett and sister of actresses Constance and Barbara Bennett, Joan Bennett began her film career at the age of 19. Among the most notable of her many roles during the 1930s were as a wisecracking waitress in Me and My Gal (1932); as Amy, the youngest sister in Little Women (1933); and as a woman slipping into mental illness in Private Worlds (1935). At the suggestion of producer Walter Wanger, her third husband, she changed her hair colour from blonde to brunette, which led to her successes in leading roles. They included a series of films noir directed by Fritz Lang, including Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945), followed by Jean Renoir’s dark melodrama Woman on the Beach (1947). In 1950 she won acclaim for a comic role as the mother in Father of the Bride.
Bennett’s film career declined drastically after Wanger shot her agent in 1951, believing him to be her lover. She then toured American theatres in stage productions and also appeared often on television, including a regular role in the daily supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows (1966–70). Her autobiography The Bennett Playbill was published in 1970.
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5d190975aef1eba29e584299662ee388 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Maragall-i-Gorina | Joan Maragall i Gorina | Joan Maragall i Gorina
In Joan Maragall i Gorina, Catalonia found its first great modern poet who, in spiritual quality, exerted a powerful influence on later poets.
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ec3573612e231381cee5a1e4a14dad9e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Morris | Joan Morris | Joan Morris
…Bolcom and his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, performed concerts of 19th- and 20th-century American popular songs. He was also active as a writer and editor. He coedited The New Grove Gospel, Blues, and Jazz (1986), cowrote with Robert Kimball the book Reminiscing with Sissle and Blake (1973), and edited a…
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9323d50fa83f90dfe51fee42848ccae1 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-of-Boulogne | Joan of Boulogne | Joan of Boulogne
His mother, Joan of Boulogne, who subsequently married the king of France, John II, ruled Philip’s lands during his minority, but after her death in 1360 he was declared of age. Though he married at the age of 12, he died without heirs, and his domains were…
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97361688283faacf146bc319112fbd67 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-of-England | Joan of England | Joan of England
…imprisoned the late king’s wife, Joan of England (Richard’s sister), and denied her possession of her dower. By the Treaty of Messina Richard obtained for Joan her release and her dower, acknowledged Tancred as king of Sicily, declared Arthur of Brittany (Richard’s nephew) to be his own heir, and provided…
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0becf1e8af785ee6052bcd02dc5b00f5 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Rivers | Joan Rivers | Joan Rivers
Joan Rivers, original name Joan Alexandra Molinsky, (born June 8, 1933, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died September 4, 2014, New York, New York), American entertainer who launched her career in show business in the 1960s as a raspy-voiced no-holds-barred nightclub and television comic and who was especially known for skewering both herself and celebrities.
After graduating from Barnard College, Rivers joined (1961) the Chicago comedy troupe Second City and performed in nightclubs. Her big break came in 1965, when she was a guest on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. Her popular performance led to numerous return visits, and from 1983 to 1986 she was a frequent guest host on the show. During that time Rivers—whose acerbic jokes were often preceded by the catchphrase “Can we talk?”—was also a headliner in Las Vegas and a sought-after guest on other TV shows. Though expected to succeed Carson, Rivers was lured by Rupert Murdoch, who had purchased the Fox TV channel, to host the short-lived The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers (1986–87); the move ignited a feud with Carson, who never spoke to her again. Three months after she was fired by Fox, Rivers’s husband, TV producer Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide.
Rivers subsequently reinvented herself as a writer, producer, and entrepreneur and launched a TV talk show, The Joan Rivers Show (1989–93; also the name of her radio program [1997–2002]). In the mid-1990s Rivers and her daughter, Melissa, became fixtures on the E! Entertainment cable network, interviewing celebrities and commenting (often disparagingly) on their appearance and ensembles worn during their red-carpet entrances to such events as the Grammys, Golden Globes, and Academy Award ceremonies. In 2010 she became the star of the E! show Fashion Police, a program that critiqued the stars’ wardrobes, and the following year she and her daughter appeared on another reality program, Joan and Melissa: Joan Knows Best?
Rivers’s acting credits included television movies and series, and she provided voices for characters in such films as Spaceballs (1987) and the animated Shrek 2 (2004). Her life and career are chronicled in the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (2010), the title of which was partly a reference to her numerous cosmetic surgeries. Rivers also authored a number of books, including the autobiographies Enter Talking (1986) and Still Talking (1991), both cowritten with Richard Meryman, and the comedic work I Hate Everyone…Starting with Me (2012).
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a0d8435930232b331c8434fe26bb924d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Spanish-infanta | Joan | Joan
…the legitimacy of the infanta Joan, who they declared was the child of the queen and of the king’s most recent favourite, Beltrán de la Cueva. Because of that account, the young girl was derided as “La Beltraneja.” Henry IV repudiated her and recognized his sister Isabella as heir to…
…against those of his daughter, Joan. They were anxious for the help and leadership of the Aragonese prince and content with the alliance of a country in which the magnates had such far-reaching privileges as the Aragonese nobility. It needed a forged papal dispensation for the marriage, the blackmailing of…
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c107b894bc6e4154e39a0580a6e9ae2c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joan-Tower | Joan Tower | Joan Tower
Joan Tower, (born September 6, 1938, New Rochelle, New York, U.S.), American composer, pianist, and conductor who was chiefly known for her colourful and often whimsical orchestral compositions.
Tower studied piano as a child, attended Bennington College, and completed her music studies at Columbia University. In 1969 she formed the Da Capo Chamber Players, for which she played piano and wrote many pieces; she left the group in 1984. Her notable orchestral compositions included Sequoia (1981), Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman (1987), and Silver Ladder (1987). For the latter work, Tower became the first woman to receive the Grawemeyer Award. The acclaimed Made in America was first performed in 2005, and it later won a Grammy Award for best classical contemporary composition. In 1972 Tower began teaching at Bard College.
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03e3ae69584e375583b2e5c363d8ca5e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joanne-Simpson | Joanne Simpson | Joanne Simpson
This approach was employed by Joanne Simpson of the U.S. Environmental Science Services Administration and others to test the effects of heavy doses of silver iodide on cumulonimbus clouds. She found that the effects of ice nuclei on large convective clouds conformed closely with theoretical predictions. Certain specified clouds were…
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10a5fd413a17052cf3792aee004c7941 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joao-Cabral-de-Melo-Neto | João Cabral de Melo Neto | João Cabral de Melo Neto
João Cabral de Melo Neto, (born January 6, 1920, Recife, Brazil—died October 9, 1999, Rio de Janeiro), Brazilian poet and diplomat, one of the last great figures of the golden age of Brazilian poetry.
Melo Neto was born to a distinguished family of landowners. He had a brief stint as a public servant before he moved in 1940 to Rio de Janeiro. In 1942 he published his first collection of poems, Pedra do sono (“Stone of Sleep”). Although his early work was marked by Surrealist and Cubist influences, his collection O engenheiro (1945; “The Engineer”) revealed him as a leading voice of the “Generation of ’45,” post-World War II poets notable for their austere style. In 1945 he joined the Brazilian diplomatic service and served in posts on four continents until his retirement in 1990. His poetry, however, was most influenced by his experience of Spain, and especially by the cities Sevilla (Seville) and Barcelona.
Melo Neto gained widespread popularity with Morte e vida Severina (1955; “Death and Life of a Severino”), a dramatic poem that made use of literatura de cordel, a popular narrative in verse. It was published in Duas águas, one of his more than 30 books of poetry. He was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1968, the year that his Poesias completas was published.
Melo Neto received a number of honours and awards, including Portugal’s prestigious Camões Prize (1990) and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1992). When he became virtually blind in 1994, he ceased writing poetry, being unable, he said, to separate his art from visual perception.
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7e580f3448c70f3b4dcaa64f70180470 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joao-Cafe-Filho | João Café Filho | João Café Filho
Vice President João Café Filho served out most of the remainder of Vargas’s term and carried out preparations for the presidential election of October 1955. The major political parties did not unite behind a single candidate; rather, three strong contenders emerged: former Minas Gerais state governor Juscelino…
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8b021671d9236309a893f6f13d15ce41 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joao-Fernandes-Vieira | João Fernandes Vieira | João Fernandes Vieira
João Fernandes Vieira, a wealthy plantation owner, subsequently launched a rebellion that steadily gained ground against John Maurice’s incompetent successors. The Brazilians, acting without Portuguese aid, defeated and expelled the Dutch in 1654, an achievement that helped spark Brazilian nationalistic sentiments.
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1bac45357c219adec78fa751f5cecfb4 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joao-Guimaraes-Rosa | João Guimarães Rosa | João Guimarães Rosa
João Guimarães Rosa, (born June 27, 1908, Cordisburgo, Brazil—died November 19, 1967, Rio de Janeiro), novelist and short-story writer whose innovative prose style, derived from the oral tradition of the sertão (hinterland of Brazil), revitalized Brazilian fiction in the mid-20th century. His portrayal of the conflicts of the Brazilian backlanders in his native state of Minas Gerais reflects the problems of an isolated rural society in adjusting to a modern urban world.
Guimarães Rosa studied medicine at Belo Horizonte and became a physician. His urge to travel, however, soon led him into the Brazilian foreign service, and he became a diplomat in several world capitals, attaining ambassadorial rank in 1963.
With the publication of Sagarana (1946), a collection of short stories set in the sertão, Guimarães Rosa was hailed as a major force in Brazilian literature. The demands of his diplomatic career, however, prevented the appearance of another work until 1956, when Corpo de Baile (“Corps de Ballet”), a collection of seven short novels, was published. His monumental epic novel, Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956; The Devil to Pay in the Backlands), firmly established his international reputation. Turning exclusively to the short story, Guimarães Rosa published several more collections before his death, notably Primeiras Estórias (1962; The Third Bank of the River).
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97acd52396f6fad19339c613edfe750d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joao-Lourenco | João Lourenço | João Lourenço
…name came to the fore: João Lourenço, a longtime member of the MPLA who was serving as vice president of the party and as the country’s minister of defense. In February 2017 Lourenço was confirmed as the party’s presidential candidate in the general election scheduled for August of that year.
…2016 there were rumours that João Lourenço, a longtime member of the MPLA who currently served as vice president of the party and as the country’s minister of defense, would be named as the party’s presidential candidate in the upcoming election; this was confirmed by the MPLA in February 2017.
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3ff1d5627c5e24a2c2efb13e16fd0b60 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joaquim-Chissano | Joaquim Chissano | Joaquim Chissano
Joaquim Chissano) and being named Africa’s third most powerful woman by Forbes magazine in 2011.
Joaquim Chissano, who became leader of Frelimo in 1986 after the death of Machel, was the first elected president of the country.
Several years later Joaquim Chissano, who had become Mozambique’s president when Machel died in a plane crash in 1986, introduced a new constitution that ended Frelimo’s one-party rule and Mozambique’s identity as a socialist country. That constitution allowed for multiparty elections, though other goals had to be met…
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830820247610513810dd6e045de617cf | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joaquim-Maria-Machado-de-Assis | Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis | Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, (born June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil—died September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro), Brazilian poet, novelist, and short-story writer, a classic master of Brazilian literature, whose art is rooted in the traditions of European culture and transcends the influence of Brazilian literary schools.
The son of a house painter of mixed black and Portuguese ancestry, he was raised, after his mother’s death, by a stepmother, also of mixed parentage. Sickly, epileptic, unprepossessing in appearance, and a stutterer, he found employment at the age of 17 as a printer’s apprentice and began to write in his spare time. Soon he was publishing stories, poems, and novels in the Romantic tradition.
By 1869 Machado was a typically successful Brazilian man of letters, comfortably provided for by a government position and happily married to a cultured woman, Carolina Augusta Xavier de Novais. In that year illness forced him to withdraw from his active career. He emerged from this temporary retreat with a new novel in a strikingly original style that marked a clear break with the literary conventions of the day. This was Memórias póstumas de Brás Cubas (1881; “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas”; Epitaph of a Small Winner, 1952), an eccentric first-person narrative with a flow of free association and digression. The “small winner,” Brás Cubas, cynically reviews his life in 160 short, often disconnected chapters.
Machado’s reputation of being among the greatest of Brazilian writers rests on this work, his short stories, and two later novels—Quincas borba (1891; Philosopher or Dog?, 1954) and his masterpiece, Dom Casmurro (1899; Eng. trans., 1953), a haunting and terrible journey into a mind warped by jealousy. Translations into English of his shorter fiction included The Devil’s Church, and Other Stories (1977), The Psychiatrist, and Other Stories (1963), A Chapter of Hats: Selected Stories (2008), and The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis (2018).
Urbane, aristocratic, cosmopolitan, aloof, and cynical, Machado used an indirect style in his fiction that could confound later scholars and critics attempting to determine his level of social engagement. One generation of critics might argue that he ignored such social questions as Brazilian independence and the abolition of slavery; a subsequent generation could find evidence of the opposite. His worldview tempered what might be called a “typical” contemporary Brazilian enthusiasm for local colour and self-conscious nationalism, but the locale of his fiction is usually a keenly observed Rio, which he took for granted as though there were no other place. The natural world is practically nonexistent in his work. His writing shows a deep-rooted pessimism and disillusionment that would be unbearable were it not disguised by flippancy and wit.
In 1896 Machado became the first president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, and he held the office until his death.
For a discussion of Machado in the context of the history of Brazilian literature, see Brazilian literature: Emergence of the republic.
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0fa3a1cf2ed02cbbe14d06dd72a7eb53 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joaquin-Costa | Joaquín Costa | Joaquín Costa
Joaquín Costa, Ángel Ganivet, and Miguel de Unamuno are generally considered precursors of the Generation of 1898, but many literary historians consider Ganivet and, usually, Unamuno as members of the group proper. Other outstanding figures are Azorín himself, the philosopher and critic José Ortega y…
Joaquín Costa, a voluminous writer, was an especially harsh critic of caciquismo (the system of electoral manipulation on the local level by political bosses); he wanted a revived, effectively democratic, modernized Spain. Miguel de Unamuno saw regeneration in terms of a return to “pure” Spanish…
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1963108356e43d7472c46403e5786cd5 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joaquin-Murrieta | Joaquín Murrieta | Joaquín Murrieta
Joaquín Murrieta, Murrieta also spelled Murieta, (baptized 1830, Alamos, Sonora, Mexico?—died 1853, California, U.S.?), legendary bandit who became a hero of the Mexican-Americans in California. Facts of his life are few and elusive, and much of what is widely known about him is derived from evolving and enduring myth.
A Joaquín Murrieta was recorded as baptized in Sonora, Mexico, in 1830; while still a teenager, he married and migrated with his wife to California (1848). In the Gold Rush he tried prospecting, as did thousands of other immigrant Sonorans. The Yankee miners pressed the legislature in Sacramento in 1850 to pass the Greaser Act (its official title) and the Foreign Miners Act in an attempt to drive out the Mexicans.
According to legend, Murrieta—or several “Murrietas”—responded to these oppressive actions by leading bands of outlaws that raided up and down the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, robbing gold miners and holding up stages. Another common element of the legend is the California governor’s offer of a reward for Murrieta’s capture, dead or alive. Historical accounts indicate that in 1853 a group of California Rangers commanded by Harry Love confronted a gang that was allegedly led by Murrieta and that they beheaded a Mexican whom they claimed was Murrieta and preserved his head in jar.
It seems likely that the historical Murrieta did participate in violent raids and robberies undertaken by a gang probably started by one of his brothers-in-law. The popular image of Murrieta as an aggrieved crusader avenging the murder of his wife and Anglo racism began with the portrayal of him in The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit, the sessional account of his life written by John Rollin Ridge (Yellow Bird) and published in 1854. Ridge’s fanciful version of Murrieta’s story was retold and refashioned many times over the decades, most prominently in Walter Noble Burns’s novelistic history The Robin Hood of El Dorado: the Saga of Joaquín Murrieta, Famous Outlaw of California’s Age of Gold (1932), which was transformed into a motion picture, The Robin Hood of El Dorado, by director William Wellman in 1936. A morphed version of the legend that recast Murrieta as Chilean provided the inspiration for a play written by Chilean Nobelist Pablo Neruda, Splendor and Death of Joaquín Murieta (1966).
Whatever the reality of the historical Murrieta is, the legendary version of his story and image of him as a freedom fighter has long resonated and provided a powerful symbol of resistance for Chicano activists.
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ead2287b7eae067c0dbb95788bd450cc | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jocelyn-Bell-Burnell | Jocelyn Bell Burnell | Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Jocelyn Bell Burnell, née Susan Jocelyn Bell, (born July 15, 1943, Belfast, Northern Ireland), British astronomer who discovered pulsars, the cosmic sources of peculiar radio pulses.
She attended the University of Glasgow, where she received a bachelor’s degree (1965) in physics. She proceeded to the University of Cambridge, where she was awarded a doctorate (1969) in radio astronomy. As a research assistant at Cambridge, she aided in constructing a large radio telescope and in 1967, while reviewing the printouts of her experiments monitoring quasars, discovered a series of extremely regular radio pulses. Puzzled, she consulted her adviser, astrophysicist Antony Hewish, and their team spent the ensuing months eliminating possible sources of the pulses, which they jokingly dubbed LGM (for Little Green Men) in reference to the remote possibility that they represented attempts at communication by extraterrestrial intelligence. After monitoring the pulses using more sensitive equipment, the team discovered several more regular patterns of radio waves and determined that they were in fact emanating from rapidly spinning neutron stars, which were later called pulsars by the press.
The 1974 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Hewish and Martin Ryle for the discovery of pulsars. Several prominent scientists protested the omission of Bell Burnell, though she maintained that the prize was presented appropriately given her student status at the time of the discovery. Subsequent to her discovery, Bell Burnell taught at the University of Southampton (1970–73) before becoming a professor at University College London (1974–82). She also taught at the Open University (1973–87) and worked at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh (1982–91), before serving as professor of physics at the Open University (1991–2001). Bell Burnell was then appointed dean of science at the University of Bath (2001–04), after which she accepted a post as visiting professor at Oxford.
Bell Burnell was created Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999 and Dame (DBE) in 2007. Bell Burnell became a member of the Royal Society in 2003. She also served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society (2002–04) and was elected to a two-year term as president of the Institute of Physics in 2008.
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8a0db6b7c5eddbc53db32ff992040acc | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jochi | Jöchi | Jöchi
Jöchi, also spelled Juchi, (died February 1227), Mongol prince, the eldest of Genghis Khan’s four sons and, until the final years of his life, a participant in his father’s military campaigns.
Jöchi, like his brothers, received his own ulus (vassal kingdom to command), a yurt (a domain for his ulus), and an inju (personal domains to support his court). His lands were in the western part of the Mongol empire. For reasons that are not entirely clear, an antagonism apparently developed after 1221 between Jöchi and his father. From 1222 until his death, five years later, Jöchi did not participate in Genghis Khan’s battles, though he did participate in the attack on the Volga Bulgars in 1223. Genghis Khan may have thought that his son was plotting his death, but Jöchi died before he could take any action. Genghis Khan died six months later, and Jöchi’s lands were divided among his sons. His eldest son, Orda, founded the White Horde, his second son, Batu, the Golden Horde.
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642490e49c464700d10922aa92ba91b3 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-Cocker | Joe Cocker | Joe Cocker
…the San Francisco Bay area), Joe Cocker (then new to American audiences), and Hendrix, the festival left its promoters virtually bankrupt. They had, however, held onto the film and recording rights and more than made their money back when Michael Wadleigh’s documentary film Woodstock (1970) became a smash hit. The…
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38aa31847dc8bcead0b4112834ddd704 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-E-Brown | Joe E. Brown | Joe E. Brown
…Sailor, a solid vehicle for Joe E. Brown, rounded out 1933 for Bacon.
…drama, and Top Speed, a Joe E. Brown musical comedy. Then came Little Caesar (1931), the film that made LeRoy’s reputation, with Edward G. Robinson as a Capone-like crime czar. It stands as one of the seminal gangster pictures, along with William Wellman’s The Public Enemy (1931) and
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76a75a46920a580e2d337ded60c0118a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-Frazier | Joe Frazier | Joe Frazier
Joe Frazier, byname Smokin’ Joe, (born January 12, 1944, Beaufort, South Carolina, U.S.—died November 7, 2011, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), American world heavyweight boxing champion from February 16, 1970, when he knocked out Jimmy Ellis in five rounds in New York City, until January 22, 1973, when he was beaten by George Foreman at Kingston, Jamaica.
During Frazier’s amateur career he was one of the best heavyweights in the United States, but he lost in the Olympic trials to Buster Mathis in 1964 and made it to the Tokyo Olympic Games as a replacement boxer only when Mathis injured his hand. He won the gold medal in his weight division and then began his professional career in August 1965. A chunky man (5 feet 11 inches [1.8 metres] tall and weighing 205 pounds [92.9 kg]) with an aggressive style and a powerful left hook, he was likened to an earlier heavyweight champion, Rocky Marciano.
After Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title in 1967, the heavyweight championship became muddled. On March 4, 1968, in a title bout sanctioned by the New York State Athletic Commission and similar bodies in other states, Frazier knocked out his old rival Mathis in 11 rounds. The following month, Jimmy Ellis won a championship tournament (in which Frazier declined to participate) approved by the World Boxing Association (WBA). Frazier successfully defended his New York title four times before defeating Ellis in a fifth-round knockout to claim the WBA heavyweight title.
In 1970 Ali was reinstated to the sport, and a bout between the undefeated former champion and Frazier was inevitable. On March 8, 1971, the two heavyweights met in Madison Square Garden in the fight billed as “The Fight of the Century.” During the build-up for the fight the media-savvy Ali characterized Frazier as a champion of the white establishment, even calling him an “Uncle Tom,” which sparked some genuine hostility between the boxers. The two fought at a furious pace for 15 rounds, but Ali had lost some of his speed during his absence from boxing, and Frazier scored a decision over him.
After his loss to Foreman in 1973, Frazier faced Ali again in 1974, losing a 12-round decision. On October 1, 1975, the two faced off in the Philippines for a third time. The fight, known as the “Thrilla in Manila,” was for the heavyweight championship, and this time Ali was the winner by technical knockout after 14 grueling rounds.
After a few more fights, Frazier retired in 1976. He staged an unsuccessful comeback attempt in 1981. He then retired again and began operating a gym in Philadelphia. Frazier was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. His daughter Jacqui began a professional boxing career in 2000.
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0234605d6549f96fe752b9680b1f4ffc | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-Montana | Joe Montana | Joe Montana
Joe Montana, in full Joseph Clifford Montana, bynames Joe Cool and the Comeback Kid, (born June 11, 1956, New Eagle, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American gridiron football player who was one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the National Football League (NFL). Montana led the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl victories (1982, 1985, 1989, 1990) and was named the Super Bowl’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) three times. He also ranks among football’s all-time leaders in passing yards (40,551) and touchdown passes (273). Montana was known for his ability to calmly bring his team to victory from the brink of defeat during the final moments of the game, earning himself the nickname “Joe Cool.”
Montana was raised in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, and excelled at baseball, basketball, and football in high school. He was offered a basketball scholarship to North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, but instead went to the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, to play collegiate football. Montana began his junior year as the Fighting Irish’s third-string quarterback but was elevated to starter after coming off the bench to lead Notre Dame to a comeback victory in the third game of the 1977 season. He finished that season by guiding once-beaten Notre Dame to the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I-A national championship. After a successful senior year that ended with a Notre Dame victory in the Cotton Bowl, Montana was selected by the 49ers in the third round of the 1979 NFL draft.
Montana became the 49ers’ starting quarterback midway through his second season in San Francisco. His field vision and keen decision making were ideal for head coach Bill Walsh’s “West Coast offense,” which relied on a series of short, accurate passes to move the ball downfield. Montana led the 49ers to their first Super Bowl victory in January 1982, earning game MVP honours in the process. His team’s play-off run was highlighted by a game-winning touchdown pass from Montana to Dwight Clark with 51 seconds remaining in the National Football Conference championship game, a play later known as “The Catch.” The 49ers won a second Super Bowl title (and Montana a second Super Bowl MVP award) in 1985, defeating the Miami Dolphins. The following spring the 49ers drafted wide receiver Jerry Rice, who teamed with Montana for six seasons to form one of the most prolific passing combinations in NFL history. In 1989 Montana led a dramatic late-game drive against the Cincinnati Bengals to win a third Super Bowl. Despite losing Walsh to retirement in the off-season, the 49ers repeated as champions the following year while posting the largest margin of victory in Super Bowl history (45 points), and Montana took home his third Super Bowl MVP trophy. In addition to his postseason accolades, Montana was named NFL MVP in 1989 and 1990.
An elbow injury forced Montana to miss all but one game over the course of the 1991 and 1992 seasons, and by the time he was ready to return to the field, future Hall of Famer Steve Young was entrenched as the 49ers starting quarterback. In 1993 Montana was traded to the Kansas City Chiefs. He earned a trip to the Pro Bowl in his first year in Kansas City (his eighth and final career selection) and led the Chiefs to play-off berths in his two seasons with the team. Montana retired in 1995, finishing his career with 31 fourth-quarter comeback victories and 10 play-off appearances in his 11 full seasons as a starting quarterback in the NFL. He was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000.
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85b4492cc67dfcc2f3811dfca1b5ae0c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-Namath | Joe Namath | Joe Namath
Joe Namath, byname of Joseph William Namath, also called Joe Willie or Broadway Joe, (born May 31, 1943, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American collegiate and professional gridiron football quarterback who was one of the best passers in football and a cultural sports icon of the 1960s.
Namath excelled in several sports as a youth in the steel-mill town of Beaver Falls, near Pittsburgh. He played football at the University of Alabama (1962–64) under coach Bear Bryant, a famous developer of quarterbacks. While playing in college, he sustained the first of many knee injuries that ultimately shortened his career. The National Football League (NFL) and the American Football League (AFL) competed for him as a first-round draft choice, and he went to the AFL New York Jets with an unprecedented three-year contract for more than $400,000. He became the Jets’ starting quarterback midway through his first season, and in 1967 he threw for a record 4,007 yards.
Like the boxer Muhammad Ali, Namath represented a transformation of the American sports hero in the 1960s. Namath was known as much for his late-night carousing with beautiful women as for his performances on the field. He was the new kind of ideal male, defined by his countercultural style, which included modish long hair that hung below his helmet and white football shoes (when everyone else wore black). His masculinity was so unquestionable that he posed in panty hose for a magazine advertisement. And at a time when athletes were expected to be modest and self-deprecating, Namath “guaranteed” that the Jets would defeat the favoured NFL Baltimore Colts in the 1969 Super Bowl; they did, 16–7.
In 1969 Namath retired briefly over the issue of his ownership of a New York City nightclub (hence his nickname “Broadway Joe”), but he sold it and returned to the Jets. In the same year, he was chosen for the all-time AFL team (the AFL and the NFL merged in 1970). As players throughout the league adopted Namath’s personal style, his own career played out anticlimactically. He played with the Jets through the 1976 season, sustaining further injuries, but he had by then set seasonal and career records for most games with 300 yards or more gained by passing. In 1977–78 he was a backup quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams, after which he retired. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985.
Namath remained in the public eye through television commercials and film, television, and theatre appearances. His memoir, All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters (cowritten with Sean Mortimer and Don Yaeger), was published in 2019.
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9e5a8b325b2d30d16070edb9e2debdcc | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-Shuster | Joe Shuster | Joe Shuster
…Siegel (scenario or text) and Joe Shuster (art); it was soon syndicated and transposed to other media. The Superman formula of the hero who transcends all physical and social laws to punish the wicked was widely imitated. The animated cartoon animals of Walt Disney also took root in the comic…
Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joseph Shuster introduced Luthor into an already swelling rogue’s gallery, but he ultimately eclipsed all the comic’s other villains. He is Superman’s greatest foe because he relies not on cosmic powers but on the power of his own mind. When it comes down to a…
…writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster. Superman first appeared in Action Comics, no. 1 (June 1938).
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1d9087f4a4a908cccedd5cbd327df069 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-Simon | Joe Simon | Joe Simon
…teaming up with fellow artist Joe Simon in 1941. Working for Timely (later Marvel) Comics, the pair created Captain America, a star-spangled super-soldier who quickly became the publisher’s most popular character. Kirby and Simon collaborated on a number of titles over the following years, exploring the crime, horror, and humour…
superhero created by writer Joe Simon and artist Jack Kirby for Timely (later Marvel) Comics. The character debuted in March 1941 in Captain America Comics no. 1.
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dd8148a9395ed88ea53be732cb264d42 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joe-Walsh | Joe Walsh | Joe Walsh
…such performers as Jimi Hendrix, Joe Walsh, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Eric Clapton. King toured extensively and made acclaimed appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival in the 1970s. The following decade he captured a new generation of fans with the albums San Francisco ’83 (1983), Laundromat Blues (1984), and I’m…
September 21, 1947, Topanga, California), Joe Walsh (b. November 20, 1947, Wichita, Kansas), and Timothy B. Schmit (b. October 30, 1947, Sacramento, California).
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8050c453bb64c4dead83b987ecd22c9b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joel-Lehtonen | Joel Lehtonen | Joel Lehtonen
Joel Lehtonen, (born November 27, 1881, Sääminki, Finland—died 1934, Helsinki), Finnish novelist in the naturalistic tradition of Émile Zola and Maxim Gorky.
The first stage of Lehtonen’s career was characterized by the Neoromanticism of the turn of the century, and his first novel, Paholaisen viula (1904; “The Fiddle of the Devil”), is highly indebted to Selma Lagerlöf’s Gösta Berlings saga (1891). In Rakastunut rampa (1922; “The Amorous Cripple”), however, Lehtonen bitterly rejects the tributes to individualism and genius worship that marked his youthful phase. The main character has deluded himself into believing that he is a superman, but as circumstances assail him he becomes overwhelmed with shame and finally commits suicide. Lehtonen returns in the short-story collection Kuolleet omenapuut (1918; “The Dead Apple Trees”) to the subject of the Finnish civil war and views it with doubt and disgust. Nihilism dominates his view of man in Putkinotko (1919–20). In it, Lehtonen despairs of the future and views the growth of industrial society as a disease. The same cultural pessimism appears in Henkien taistelu (1933; “The Struggle of Spirits”) and in his poems, Hyvästijättö Lintukodolle (1934; “Farewell to the Bird’s Nest”), which were written shortly before his suicide. Lehtonen’s influence on Finnish literature has increased over the years.
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2dc6264ca9f192a8d83c4a7ff4ab9598 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joey-Bishop | Joey Bishop | Joey Bishop
…their own late-night shows—including The Joey Bishop Show (ABC, 1967–69), The Dick Cavett Show (ABC, 1968–75), and The Merv Griffin Show (CBS, 1969–72)—but none could compete with The Tonight Show. In 1973 NBC introduced The Midnight Special (1973–81), a rock music variety show that ran from 1:00 am to 2:30…
Assorted Referencesdiscussed in biographyrole of Martin
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7b1592b34d4244b84d5e0d1a3f1898db | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joey-Giardello | Joey Giardello | Joey Giardello
…a 15-round decision to American Joey Giardello (Carmen Orlando Telleli). On October 21, 1965, Tiger regained the championship by defeating Giardello in a 15-round decision. He lost the title again on April 25, 1966, when Emile Griffith of the U.S. Virgin Islands, the world welterweight (147 pounds) champion, moved up…
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9b1104716a582ad6beded815ae6b902b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joey-Maxim | Joey Maxim | Joey Maxim
…clever and far more experienced Joey Maxim, a former light-heavyweight champion.
…1952 he narrowly missed defeating Joey Maxim for the light-heavyweight (175-pound) crown and a few months later retired.
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cbc1a4ff3be9a1836f6a5a8ee3b6bc06 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johan-Baner | Johan Banér | Johan Banér
Johan Banér, (born July 3 [June 23, Old Style], 1596, Djursholm Castle, Sweden—died May 20 [May 10], 1641, Halberstadt, Magdeburg [Germany]), Swedish field marshal who was one of the foremost soldiers in the Thirty Years’ War.
His father, Gustaf Banér, a member of the King’s Council, was executed in 1600 after Charles IX’s defeat of Sigismund III of Poland in their struggle for the Swedish throne. Entering the Swedish army in 1615, Johan Banér was greatly influenced by the military ideas of the young king Gustavus Adolphus: he served with distinction in Russia, Livonia, Poland, and Germany and early attained the rank of general. In 1634 he was appointed field marshal, with command of an army corps in Silesia and Bohemia; and, after the main Swedish army had been crushed at the Battle of Nördlingen that year, he was asked to take command of all Swedish forces in Germany.
In 1636 his great victory over Saxon and imperial forces at the Battle of Wittstock restored both Sweden’s morale and (for a time) its paramount influence in central Germany. In 1637, hard pressed by the enemy’s armies and almost surrounded, he made a strategic retreat into northern Germany that provoked the contemporary comment that “the enemy had put him in the sack but had forgotten to tie it.” By the end of 1638, however, Banér had collected reinforcements, with which he began a new offensive toward central and southern Germany. At Chemnitz (April 1639), he defeated the imperial forces. Reinforced by French troops, he advanced toward southern Germany during the summer and autumn of 1640 but could not force the enemy to a battle. After a dangerous march through Bohemia in the winter, he died at Halberstadt of a pulmonary disease contracted during the winter campaign.
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aa0e5f01482e163888b14f260f9dd2a7 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johan-Bjornsson-Printz | Johan Björnsson Printz | Johan Björnsson Printz
Johan Björnsson Printz, (born July 20, 1592, Bottnaryd, Swed.—died May 3, 1663, Gunillaberg Manor, Swed.), Swedish military officer and colonial governor of New Sweden on the Delaware River.
Printz, the son of a Lutheran pastor, received his early education in Sweden before he departed in 1618 for theological studies at German universities. He was pressed into military service in Germany in about 1620, and during the Thirty Years’ War, he became a mercenary for Archduke Leopold of Austria, Duke Christian of Brunswick, and King Christian IV of Denmark. Printz entered the Swedish army in 1625; 13 years later he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1639 he surrendered Chemnitz to a Saxon army but was exonerated of any wrongdoing by a military court-martial in Sweden.
In April 1642 Printz was appointed director (governor) of the colony of New Sweden, and the following February he arrived with two ships at Ft. Christina, the site of present Wilmington, Del. Shortly after his arrival, he ordered the construction of Ft. Elfsborg at Varkens Kill, and he built his own large residence at New Gothenborg (Tinicum Island). Printz, who was an energetic and conscientious governor, established harmony with the local Indians, arranged amicable relations with English North American settlers, initiated trade connections with the Dutch in New Netherlands, and constructed or directed several commercial enterprises within New Sweden.
He also was an autocratic administrator, and his growing quarrels with the settlers led several of them to petition to take their grievances directly to the Swedish government. Printz had the ringleader of the dissident colonists executed, but tensions continued to grow. In September 1653 the governor relinquished his rule to his deputy and son-in-law, John Papegoja, and returned to Sweden. He spent his last years there as governor of his home district.
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281cc777efd829299595b72cf41a6a0a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johan-Borgen | Johan Borgen | Johan Borgen
Johan Borgen, in full Johan Collet Müller Borgen, (born April 28, 1902, Kristiania [now Oslo], Norway—died October 16, 1979, Hvaler), Norwegian novelist, short-story writer, dramatist, and essayist, one of 20th-century Norway’s most important and versatile writers.
Borgen was born into a bourgeois family, but, though he was politically inactive, he himself was often considered a member of the radical left. His principal work was a novel trilogy: Lillelord (1955), De mørke kilder (1956; “The Dark Springs”), and Vi har ham nå (1957; “Now We Have Him”), all three translated into English under the title Lillelord (1982). In these novels Borgen gives a picture of upper-middle-class life in Norway from 1917 through World War II; and in the figure of the protagonist, Wilfred Sagen, he draws a profound portrait of the kind of alienated and disaffected individual who, during the war, collaborated with the Nazis. The novel is equally valuable as a period study, with vignettes of the artist life in Copenhagen and Paris, and as a psychological study.
Borgen began his career as a short-story writer with the collection Mot mørket (1925; “Toward Darkness”) and continued to do some of his best work in that genre. Noveller om kjærlighet (1952; “Love Stories”) was a great success both critically and with the general public, as was the collection Noveller i utvalg (1961; “Selected Short Stories”).
In his later, more experimental novels, Borgen continued to create fictions that posed questions concerning alienation and identity: Jeg (1959; “I”); Blåtind (1964; “Blue Peak”); and Den røde tåken (1967; The Red Mist).
Borgen also wrote plays and over a long career developed a mastery of the short, witty essay. He won the Nordic Council’s literary prize for a collection of short stories, Nye noveller (1965; “New Stories”). From 1954 to 1959 he was editor of the literary journal Vinduet. He was also a great critic, with an ability to transmit his enthusiasm for books in lucid analyses and to question literary tradition’s hold on the modern writer. In his role as critic, he also introduced many foreign writers to Norwegian readers, showing a particular attraction to Danish literature.
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7bb22f6475a59c7fdd6cd40c208d10cc | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johan-Gottlieb-Gahn | Johan Gottlieb Gahn | Johan Gottlieb Gahn
Johan Gottlieb Gahn, (born Aug. 19, 1745, Voxna, near Söderhamn, Swed.—died Dec. 8, 1818, Stockholm), Swedish mineralogist and crystallographer who discovered manganese in 1774. His failure to win fame may be related to the fact that he published little. He saved the notes, papers, and letters of his friend Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who discovered chlorine, but not his own. His essays on the balance and use of the blowpipe in analysis were recorded by Jöns Jacob Berzelius of Sweden. Gahn was assistant to Torbern Bergman, pioneer analytical chemist and physicist at the University of Uppsala. With Scheele, Gahn discovered phosphoric acid in bones and prepared phosphorus from bones. He improved copper-smelting processes and studied technical applications of minerals, opening new branches of industry. Gahnite (zinc spinel) is named for him. In 1784 he was appointed assessor of the mining college at Stockholm.
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6fa782e0f051c688099249ee9548ff98 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johan-Herman-Lie-Vogt | Johan Herman Lie Vogt | Johan Herman Lie Vogt
Johan Herman Lie Vogt, (born Oct. 14, 1858, Tvedestrand, Nor.—died Jan. 3, 1932, Trondheim), Norwegian geologist and petrologist who pioneered in the use of physical-chemical methods in the study of the origin of igneous rocks and ores.
Vogt was appointed professor of metallurgy at the University of Christiania in 1886. His first important work, Studier over slagger (1884; “Studies on Slags”), began a series of studies on molten slags, in which he examined the crystallization of furnace slags and pointed out the close resemblance in mineral composition and texture between slags and certain igneous rocks. His principal work on slags, Die Silikatschmelzlösungen (“The Molten Silicate Solutions”), appeared in 1903–04. Vogt’s studies served as a starting point in applying the known laws of solutions to the crystallization of igneous-rock magmas, and his pioneer work did much to stimulate the quantitative research that followed. In 1912 he took the chair of mineralogy at the technical high school at Trondheim, retiring 16 years later.
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2d84d8133b08fac307a90acdb65eaddc | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johan-Ludvig-Heiberg | Johan Ludvig Heiberg | Johan Ludvig Heiberg
Johan Ludvig Heiberg, (born December 14, 1791, Copenhagen, Denmark—died August 25, 1860, Bonderup), playwright, poet, literary historian, and critic whose romantic idealism in a sense epitomized the Danish Romantic school, which he helped bring to an end when he established a new era of topical, sophisticated, and satirical literature. Heiberg also introduced both Hegelian philosophy and vaudeville, or ballad opera, to Denmark.
Originally Heiberg planned an academic career and taught Danish at the University of Kiel (1822–25), but he turned to writing in earnest about 1825. The son of the political writer Peter Andreas Heiberg and his wife, the novelist Thomasine, Baroness Gyllembourg-Ehrensvärd, Heiberg was a central figure in Danish literature and criticism for many years. During this time he originated Danish vaudeville, a form of popular folk musical, in which critical and satirical verses were set to well-known melodies. Theoretically, he argued in Om Vaudevillen (1826; “About Vaudeville”), vaudeville as a genre was a synthesis of words and music that subsumed in its poetic realism both the lyrical and the epic and thus marked the highest form of comedy-drama. Besides his vaudeville pieces, Heiberg’s most frequently performed plays are Elverhøj (1828; “Elfinhill”) and En sjæl efter døden (1841; A Soul After Death), which was his greatest literary success. He had a lifelong association with the Danish Royal Theatre, where his wife was the leading actress, and from 1849 to 1856 he was the theatre’s controversial general manager.
Over the years Heiberg edited several influential periodicals, most notably Kjøbenhavns flyvende post (“Copenhagen’s Flying Mail”) from 1827 to 1828, again in 1830, and, under the name Interimsblade, from 1834 to 1837. In this journal he carried on many literary feuds but also featured many new talents, including Søren Kierkegaard and Hans Christian Andersen. Even such exponents of modern realism as Georg Brandes and Henrik Ibsen acknowledged debts of inspiration owed to Heiberg.
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80d7a99c24e01cfa62b36c230f12a220 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johan-Vilhelm-Snellman | Johan Vilhelm Snellman | Johan Vilhelm Snellman
Johan Vilhelm Snellman, (born May 12, 1806, Stockholm, Swed.—died July 4, 1881, Kirkkonummi, Fin.), Finnish nationalist philosopher and statesman who was an important figure in the movement to establish Finnish as a national language.
In 1835, when Snellman became a philosophy instructor at the University of Helsinki, Finland was a grand duchy of Russia (1809–1917) and Swedish was the language of cultivated people. That same year the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, was published, thus initiating interest in establishing a national literature in Finnish. From the 1840s Snellman led the movement for the adoption of Finnish as the mother tongue and insisted that Finnish be allowed in government offices and schools.
In 1842 he published Läran om staten (“Political Science”), which was influenced deeply by the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel and in which he advanced the idea that the essence of a state is a national spirit. His influence as a stimulator of the national cultural life began in 1844 with the publication in Finnish of his Maamiehen ystävä (“Farmer’s Friend”) and a Swedish-language newspaper that was suppressed in 1846. Later, with Elias Lönnrot, the scholar and folklorist who compiled the Kalevala, he edited the Litteraturblad för allmän medborgerlig bildning (“Literary News for General Civic Culture”). He was appointed a professor at the University of Helsinki in 1856 and from 1863 to 1868 served as a senator. Snellman exerted a decisive influence on the promulgation of the 1863 statute extending the use of Finnish. He also helped to change the Finnish monetary standard from rubles to marks (1865). His Kootut teokset (“Collected Works”) appeared in 1928–33.
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5b07f6e12b91485a6c87fddd6e1d69aa | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Agricola | Johann Agricola | Johann Agricola
Johann Agricola, original name Johann Schneider, Schneider also spelled Schnitter, Latin Sartor, (born April 20, 1494, Eisleben, Saxony—died Sept. 22, 1566, Berlin), Lutheran Reformer, friend of Martin Luther, and advocate of antinomianism, a view asserting that Christians are freed by grace from the need to obey the Ten Commandments. At Wittenberg, Agricola was persuaded by Luther to change his course of study from medicine to theology. Increasingly under Luther’s influence, Agricola accompanied him as recording secretary to his Leipzig debate of 1519 with the scholar Johann Eck.
In 1525 Agricola helped introduce Lutheranism to Frankfurt and, in the same year, became head of the Latin school at Eisleben. There, he began to assert his antinomianism (Greek anti, “against”; nomos, “law”), condemning the law as an unnecessary carry-over from the Old Testament and as too similar to the Roman Catholic stress on good works: “The Decalog (Ten Commandments) belongs in the courthouse, not in the pulpit. . . . To the gallows with Moses!” In 1527 he became more forceful, attacking the Reformer Philipp Melanchthon, an associate of Luther, for Lutheran inclusion of the law in Reformation theology. The conflict was enlarged when Agricola returned to Wittenberg in 1536, and Luther responded with five disputations and the treatise “Against the Antinomians.” Under persecution for his attacks on Luther’s position, in 1540 Agricola went to Berlin, where he retracted his views and in the same year was made court preacher by the Protestant prince Joachim II of Brandenburg. Shortly afterward he returned to Saxony but found himself no longer in Luther’s trust.
In 1548, following Charles V’s victory over the Protestants in his effort to unify the Holy Roman Empire, Agricola was selected by the emperor as one of three theologians to draft a provisional religious settlement between Protestants and Roman Catholics, a document that became known as the Augsburg Interim. His role earned Agricola the hatred of staunch Protestants, but he defended strict Lutheranism in other controversies and toward the end of his life considered himself to have won a substantial victory for Luther’s views. Although criticized by some as vain and too morally weak to shun court favours, Agricola was a gifted theologian and administrator.
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f91132eee012a05dd49a6ecf2c307b6c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-August-Eberhard | Johann August Eberhard | Johann August Eberhard
Johann August Eberhard, (born Aug. 31, 1739, Halberstadt, Brandenburg [Germany]—died Jan. 6, 1809, Halle, Westphalia), German philosopher and lexicographer who defended the views of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz against those of Immanuel Kant and compiled a dictionary of the German language that remained in use for a century.
After studying theology at the University of Halle, Eberhard became a Lutheran preacher in 1763 at Halberstadt. In 1774 he was a pastor at Charlottenburg but gradually became estranged from orthodox Lutheranism through the influence of the German-Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn and the German writer C.F. Nicolai, an opponent of Kant. Consequently, in his Neue Apologie des Socrates (1772–78; “A New Apology for Socrates”) and in his Allgemeine Theorie des Denkens und Empfindens (1776; “General Theory of Thinking and Feeling”), Eberhard advocated the free examination of religious doctrine and epistemological rationalism in the manner of Leibniz and the German thinker Christian Wolff. Kant’s critical philosophy appeared to him superfluous in view of what Leibniz and Wolff had already achieved.
In 1778 Eberhard was named professor of theology at Halle by King Frederick II of Prussia. Eight years later he became a member of the Berlin Academy and in 1805 was appointed a privy counselor. His German dictionary, 6 vol. (1795–1802), was reissued in an abridged form as Synonymisches Handwörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (1802; “Dictionary of Synonyms in the German Language”) and was republished in its 17th edition in 1910 with English, French, Italian, and Russian equivalents.
Opposed to abstract philosophical speculation, Eberhard preferred empirical studies in fields including aesthetics and ethics. Among his later works are Theorie der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften (1783; “Theory of the Fine Arts and Sciences”), Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie (1788; “General History of Philosophy”), and Handbuch der Aesthetik (1803–05).
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2295f4f91d67ebd238649caa9a441ead | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Baptist-Cramer | Johann Baptist Cramer | Johann Baptist Cramer
Johann Baptist Cramer, (born Feb. 24, 1771, Mannheim, Rhenish Palatinate [Germany]—died April 16, 1858, London), one of the leading pianists of the period of transition from Classicism to Romanticism, composer, and founder (1824) of the London music publishing firm Cramer & Company.
Cramer was taken to England in 1772 by his father. His piano teachers included the noted pianist and composer Muzio Clementi, under whom he developed the exceptional abilities that gained him a European reputation as a performer. His playing stressed smoothness and clarity and was restrained in comparison with the bravura of the later Romantic pianists. A prolific composer, he is remembered for his piano studies, which, like his playing, were highly regarded by Beethoven.
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64f6d21d8625a52548659563648161d8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Bernhard-Basedow | Johann Bernhard Basedow | Johann Bernhard Basedow
Johann Bernhard Basedow, (born Sept. 11, 1724, Hamburg [Germany]—died July 25, 1790, Magdeburg, Brandenburg), influential German educational reformer who advocated the use of realistic teaching methods and the introduction of nature study, physical education, and manual training into the schools. He also called for an end to physical punishment and to rote memorization in language learning.
Basedow as a boy revolted against the harsh discipline of his school and ran away from home. He became the servant of a physician, who urged him to return to school, and in 1744 entered the University of Leipzig. Brilliant but undisciplined, he refused to study and instead wrote term papers for money, tutored wealthy students, and spent his earnings in dissipation.
In 1749 he became tutor to a difficult aristocratic child, and it was then that he began inventing games as aids to teaching. His success brought him an appointment in 1753 as a teacher of philosophy at the Danish Academy of Sorø. There he fascinated his students with his lectures but alienated his colleagues by his riotous living and attacks on organized religion. Expelled from the academy, he obtained a similar post at the Gymnasium at Altona, but this time he failed to impress his students, who were mostly aristocratic and from conservative families.
In 1768 Basedow published his acclaimed educational appeal to the friends of humanity, Vorstellung an Menschenfreunde, which demanded educational reform and called for the creation of a laboratory school for training teachers in his methods. In 1774, following several revisions of his popular work, Basedow received financial backing from the prince of Anhalt, and he proceeded to set up a school, the Philanthropinum, in Dessau. The performances of his first pupils profoundly impressed observers, including Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. However, his heavy drinking and emotional outbursts drove away the better teachers, and in 1784 Basedow severed his connection with the school.
Basedow’s views were based on the writings of men such as John Amos Comenius, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His practical teaching methods were more expansive in their implications for education than those of any of his immediate predecessors in the field, and by the early 19th century they had become a fundamental force in Germany’s public school systems.
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34d3332cd4c47354cf0357ffb7d6dc13 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Christoph-Freiherr-von-Bartenstein | Johann Christoph, baron von Bartenstein | Johann Christoph, baron von Bartenstein
Johann Christoph, baron von Bartenstein, (born October 23, 1689, Strasbourg, Alsace—died August 6, 1767, Vienna), Austrian statesman and trusted counsellor of Emperor Charles VI. He created the political system that was based upon the Pragmatic Sanction; it was intended to guarantee the peaceful accession of Charles VI’s daughter Maria Theresa to the entire Habsburg inheritance. He became the most powerful minister in the Habsburg dominions when Charles died in 1740.
Joining the imperial chancellery in 1726, Bartenstein gradually won the confidence of Charles VI and was subsequently appointed secretary of state (1733). After 1735 his influence with the emperor was paramount. His was the primary role in negotiating the marriage of Maria Theresa to Francis Stephen of Lorraine (later Emperor Francis I) and implementing the diplomacy required to promote her husband’s eventual accession to the imperial title.
As a chief adviser to Maria Theresa, Bartenstein steadily opposed concessions to Prussia and generally pursued an anti-English, pro-French foreign policy. He was finally displaced as chief minister in 1753 by Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz. Bartenstein’s honesty and discretion were matched by his self-righteousness toward foreign diplomats and obsequiousness to his patrons; his efficiency and legal knowledge, however, made him an indispensable figure in Habsburg diplomacy.
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2840eae13e73c7903dcce6b9e3960f83 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Clauberg | Johann Clauberg | Johann Clauberg
Johann Clauberg, (born Feb. 24, 1622, Solingen, duchy of Berg [Germany]—died Jan. 31, 1665, Duisburg, Brandenburg), philosopher and theologian who became the foremost German proponent of the thought of the French philosopher René Descartes.
After study at Bremen and in the Netherlands at Groningen and after travel in France and England, Clauberg encountered Cartesian philosophy in lectures by the Dutch thinker Johan de Raey at Leiden, Neth. From 1649 to 1651 Clauberg served as professor of philosophy and theology at the academy of Herborn, Nassau (an academy that was conducted according to the Reformation theology of John Calvin), and he soon distinguished himself as the leading Cartesian in Germany and the Netherlands. Opposition to his views from colleagues, particularly from a professor of rhetoric, C. Lentz, influenced Clauberg to accept an appointment as head of the Gymnasium, or secondary school, at Duisburg in 1651. Two years later he was commissioned to teach philosophy and theology there and was named rector in 1655, when the school became a university.
Against Lentz and Jacobus Revius, a Dutch Calvinist poet, Clauberg upheld the Cartesian method of pursuing knowledge in his Defensio Cartesiana (1652). He sought again to refute Revius in his Initiatio Philosophi (1655). In Exercitationes Centum de Cognitione Dei et Nostri (1656; “One Hundred Exercises on the Knowledge of God and Ourselves”), he proceeded from his proof for the existence of God based on a concept of the infinite to an account of knowledge and being in general. The similarity of this work to the thought of Plato is evident also in Corporis et Animae in Homine Conjunctio (1663; “On the Joining of the Body and the Soul in Man”), in which he addressed the Cartesian topic of the relation between body and soul. The soul, he maintained, is incapable of movement and cannot create movement in the bodily world, because the quantity of movement remains constant. Yet the soul can guide bodily movements through its will. Consequently, the soul has moral rather than physical force. In Clauberg’s view, known as occasionalism, bodies do not cause or create the soul but provide the “occasion” for it to function creatively. The harmonious interaction of body and soul depends on the providence of God, who is considered by Clauberg in Cartesian fashion to be the ultimate cause of all motion.
A collected edition of Clauberg’s philosophical writings, by J.T. Schalbruch, appeared in 1691. In addition to a work on German philology, Ars Etymologica Teutonum e Philosophiae (1663; “The Art of Teutonic Etymology”), Clauberg wrote lucid expositions of Descartes’s Meditations and Principia Philosophiae. In his Ontologia sive Metaphysica de Ente (1660; “Ontology or Metaphysics of Being”), Clauberg sought to reconcile Cartesian doctrines with the metaphysical positions of his pre-Cartesian Ontosophia (1647; “The Wisdom of Being”).
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5efecc47f3699d003943228f6b67278e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Deisenhofer | Johann Deisenhofer | Johann Deisenhofer
Johann Deisenhofer, (born September 30, 1943, Zusamaltheim, Germany), German American biochemist who, along with Hartmut Michel and Robert Huber, received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1988 for their determination of the structure of certain proteins that are essential to photosynthesis.
Deisenhofer earned a doctorate from the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, West Germany, in 1974. He conducted research there until 1988, when he joined the scientific staff at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Dallas, Texas. That year he also began teaching at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. In 2001 Deisenhofer became a U.S. citizen.
Together with Michel and Huber, Deisenhofer set out to study the structure of a protein complex found in certain photosynthetic bacteria. This protein, called a photosynthetic reaction centre, was known to play a crucial role in initiating a simple type of photosynthesis. Between 1982 and 1985, the three scientists used X-ray crystallography to determine the exact arrangement of the more than 10,000 atoms that make up the protein complex. Their research increased the general understanding of the mechanisms of photosynthesis and revealed similarities between the photosynthetic processes of plants and bacteria.
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29a9973037d278c4ebf8777dad5333e8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Ferdinand-Portia | Johann Ferdinand Portia | Johann Ferdinand Portia
…among whom the cultured count Johann Ferdinand Portia was the leading personality. Made lord high steward by his pupil, Portia retained his influence with Leopold until his death in 1665. From an early age Leopold showed an inclination toward learning. He learned easily and became fluent in Latin, Italian, and…
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f523a3d53c54da8eaba325dede0b2071 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Friedrich-Bohmer | Johann Friedrich Böhmer | Johann Friedrich Böhmer
Johann Friedrich Böhmer, (born April 22, 1795, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]—died Oct. 22, 1863, Frankfurt am Main), historian known for his Regesta, an annotated collection of charters and imperial documents of medieval Germany.
After studying at the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg, Böhmer journeyed to Italy, where he became interested in art history. Upon his return to Frankfurt (1822), he became an assistant librarian at the art institute but subsequently devoted himself to general history. Named archivist (1825) and then head librarian (1830) of the city of Frankfurt, Böhmer began publishing the Regesta. The first volume, Urkunden der römischen Könige und Kaiser von Konrad I bis Heinrich VII, 911–1313 (1831; “Documents of the Roman Kings and Emperors from Conrad I to Henry VII, 911–1313”), contained extracts of documents with Böhmer’s comments and historical introductions; it was followed by a more extensive treatment for the period 1198–1313. Other Regesta were Urkunden sämtlicher Karolinger (1833; “Documents of the Carolingian Kings”) and a series of German imperial registers for the periods 1314–47 (1839), 1246–1313 (1844), and 1198–1254 (1849), with introductions and explanatory passages by Böhmer. He also published Fontes Rerum Germanicarum (1843–68), a valuable collection of original authorities for German history during the 13th and 14th centuries, and he edited many other collections. On his death he left many manuscripts, some of which were subsequently published.
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dac314f7e3d107fb4f6f11f74510f71d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Friedrich-Herbart | Johann Friedrich Herbart | Johann Friedrich Herbart
Johann Friedrich Herbart, (born May 4, 1776, Oldenburg—died Aug. 14, 1841, Göttingen, Hanover), German philosopher and educator, who led the renewed 19th-century interest in Realism and is considered among the founders of modern scientific pedagogy.
After studying under Johann Gottlieb Fichte at Jena (1794), Herbart worked as a tutor at Interlaken, Switz., from 1797 to 1800, during which period he made the acquaintance of Pestalozzi. Becoming a licentiate of the University of Göttingen in 1802, he was appointed extraordinary professor there in 1805. At the close of 1808 he became Kant’s successor as professor at Königsberg. There he also conducted a seminary of pedagogy until 1833, when he returned as professor of philosophy to Göttingen, where he remained until his death.
Herbart’s position in the history of philosophy is due mainly to his contributions to the philosophy of mind. His aims in this respect are expressed by the title of his textbook—Psychologie als Wissenschaft neu gegrundet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik, und Mathematik, 2 vol. (1824–25; “Psychology As Knowledge Newly Founded on Experience, Metaphysics, and Mathematics”); of central importance is the inclusion of Mathematik. He rejected the whole concept of faculties (in Kantian terms) and regarded mental life as the manifestation of elementary sensory units or “presentations” (Vorstellungen). These he conceived as mental forces rather than as mere “ideas” in Locke’s sense. The study of their interactions gave rise to a statics and dynamics of the mind, to be expressed in mathematical formulas like those of Newtonian mechanics. Ideas need not be conscious; and they might either combine to produce composite resultants or conflict with one another so that some get temporarily inhibited or repressed “below the threshold of consciousness.” An organized but unconscious system of associated ideas formed an “apperception mass”; such a system could apperceive a new presentation and thus give it richer meaning. On this basis Herbart developed a theory of education as a branch of applied psychology.
His theory of education—known as Herbartianism—was set out principally in two works, Pestalozzis Idee eines A B C der Anschauung (1802; “Pestalozzi’s Idea of an A B C of Sense Perception”) and Allgemeine Pädagogik (1806; “Universal Pedagogy”), which advocated five formal steps in teaching: (1) preparation, a process of relating new material to be learned to relevant past ideas or memories in order to give the pupil a vital interest in the topic under consideration; (2) presentation, presenting new material by means of concrete objects or actual experience; (3) association, thorough assimilation of the new idea through comparison with former ideas and consideration of their similarities and differences in order to implant the new idea in the mind; (4) generalization, a procedure especially important to the instruction of adolescents and designed to develop the mind beyond the level of perception and the concrete; and (5) application, using acquired knowledge not in a purely utilitarian way, but so that every learned idea becomes a part of the functional mind and an aid to a clear, vital interpretation of life. This step is presumed possible only if the student immediately applies the new idea, making it his own.
Herbart maintained that a science of education was possible, and he furthered the idea that education should be a subject for university study. His ideas took firm hold in Germany in the 1860s and spread also to the United States. By the turn of the century, however, the five steps had degenerated to a mechanical formalism, and the ideas behind them were replaced by new pedagogical theories, in particular those of John Dewey.
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d1ac206ce927d39e0615528f433d26ba | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Fust | Johann Fust | Johann Fust
Johann Fust, (born c. 1400, Mainz [Germany]—died Oct. 30, 1466, Paris, France), early German printer, financial backer of Johann Gutenberg (the inventor of printing in Europe), and founder, with Peter Schoeffer, of the first commercially successful printing firm.
Fust, a prominent goldsmith, lent Gutenberg 800 guilders in 1450 to perfect his movable-type printing process. An additional 800 guilders was lent about two years later. Gutenberg’s 42-line Bible and his 1457 Psalter were almost finished, but Fust sued in 1455 for 2,026 guilders to recover his money with interest. The court found in Fust’s favour, and Gutenberg lost his invention and equipment.
With Schoeffer, who was one of Fust’s witnesses in the lawsuit, Fust set up his own printing firm and published the 42-line Bible in 1456. The Psalter, the first example of colour printing, with superb red-ink printing and two-colour initials, was finished in 1457. Fust’s firm published further works, notably a Benedictine Psalter (1459), Clement V’s Constitutiones, or Clementinae (1460), the 48-line Bible (1462), and Cicero’s De officiis (1465), the first classical text ever printed.
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fa6ad75f7a36e4e8af6c0f0142d79db9 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Georg-Bodmer | Johann Georg Bodmer | Johann Georg Bodmer
Johann Georg Bodmer, (born Dec. 6, 1786, Zürich, Switz.—died May 30, 1864, Zürich), Swiss mechanic and prolific inventor of machine tools and textile-making machinery.
Information on Bodmer’s life is scanty, but it is known that he lived in Switzerland, England, France, and Austria. Because many of his ideas were in advance of their time, his manufacturing ventures were not always successful. In 1803, at St. Blaise in the Black Forest, he established a small firearms factory, employing a special series of machines to make interchangeable parts.
Bodmer later made three visits to England, the first in 1816, when he visited ironworks, engineering shops, and textile mills. In 1824 he established a small factory at Bolton, Lancashire, to manufacture machinery that made the process from carding to spinning wool continuous. Though this machinery was widely adopted in England and later in the United States and is said to have revolutionized the industry, its inventor does not appear to have profited, for that venture also failed, and he returned for a time to the European continent.
In 1833 he set up a machine shop in Manchester, equipped with machine tools he had designed and constructed for himself. Between 1839 and 1841 he patented more than 40 specialized machine tools that he then set up in an ingenious factory-type arrangement to produce parts from iron and steel. One of the most important was a machine to make gears; it could cut teeth of predetermined pitch, form, and depth in a metal blank. Bodmer also patented various steam-engine devices and is credited with inventing the cylinder with opposed pistons.
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0d6e6002ae5025354f2a09c872ecb8ce | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Gottfried-Galle | Johann Gottfried Galle | Johann Gottfried Galle
Johann Gottfried Galle, (born June 9, 1812, near Gräfenhainichen, Prussian Saxony—died July 10, 1910, Potsdam, Ger.), German astronomer who on Sept. 23, 1846, was the first to observe the planet Neptune.
Galle joined the staff of the Berlin Observatory, where he served as assistant director under J.F. Encke from 1835 until 1851. He studied the rings of Saturn and suggested a method, later successful, of measuring the scale of the solar system by observing the parallax of asteroids. He looked for Neptune at the request of the French astronomer U.-J.-J. Le Verrier, who had computed the planet’s probable position before it was seen. From 1851 until 1897 Galle was director of the Breslau Observatory.
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698c1fe10b4ea9429762e04628c78d00 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Gottfried-Walther | Johann Gottfried Walther | Johann Gottfried Walther
Johann Gottfried Walther, (born September 18, 1684, Erfurt, Mainz [Germany]—died March 23, 1748, Weimar), German organist and composer who was one of the first musical lexicographers.
Walther grew up in Erfurt, where as a child he studied the organ and took singing lessons. In 1702 he became an organist at Erfurt’s Thomaskirche. After studying briefly at the local university, Walther decided to devote himself to music, especially music theory. In 1703 he began a period of travel, touring Germany and meeting such influential musicians as Andreas Werckmeister, a fellow theorist who took Walther under his wing. In 1707 Walther became organist at the Weimar Stadtkirche, and he retained that post until his death. In Weimar he also served as music teacher to Prince Johann Ernst, nephew of the reigning duke. Between 1708 and 1714 Walther formed a friendship with Johann Sebastian Bach, of whom he was a second cousin. During this time he wrote his Praecepta der musicalischen Composition (dated 1708, published 1955), a treatise of musical theory that included information on such subjects as notation, musical terms, and the art of composing, probably written as an instruction manual for Johann Ernst. From 1721 Walther headed the ducal orchestra of Wilhelm Ernst.
Walther’s compositions, which were highly respected by his contemporaries, include chorale preludes and variations for the organ, and organ arrangements of concerti by Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni, Giuseppe Torelli, and other Italian composers. Walther’s Musicalisches Lexikon, completed in 1732 (reissued 2001, with notes), was the first major music dictionary published in German and the first music encyclopaedia in the world to include biography, bibliography, and musical terms. It remains an invaluable source in the study of Baroque music. A volume of Walther’s letters was published in 1987.
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c86189543e2c4fc4c44bacd08c55fb55 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Gottfried-Wetzstein | Johann Gottfried Wetzstein | Johann Gottfried Wetzstein
Johann Gottfried Wetzstein, (born Feb. 19, 1815, Oelsnitz, Saxony—died Jan. 18, 1905, Berlin), Orientalist who propounded (1873) a “literal” interpretation of the Song of Solomon, which, despite its presence in the Old Testament, he read as an anthology of love songs having no religious or allegorical significance. A similar idea had been advanced by the philosopher and theologian Johann Gottfried von Herder, but Wetzstein’s observations of Syrian marriage customs (he was Prussian consul at Damascus, 1848–62) gave substance to the theory. Widely accepted for a time, his interpretation was partly superseded by and partly assimilated by the fertility cult–mythological view, proposed early in the 20th century.
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ec56d5b18e8bfe8644f8a0e1320fd193 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Gottlieb-Fichte | Johann Gottlieb Fichte | Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, (born May 19, 1762, Rammenau, Upper Lusatia, Saxony [now in Germany]—died Jan. 27, 1814, Berlin), German philosopher and patriot, one of the great transcendental idealists.
Fichte was the son of a ribbon weaver. Educated at the Pforta school (1774–80) and at the universities of Jena (1780) and of Leipzig (1781–84), he started work as a tutor. In this capacity he went to Zürich in 1788 and to Warsaw in 1791 but left after two weeks’ probation.
The major influence on his thought at this time was that of Immanuel Kant, whose doctrine of the inherent moral worth of man harmonized with Fichte’s character; and he resolved to devote himself to perfecting a true philosophy, the principles of which should be practical maxims. He went from Warsaw to see Kant himself at Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), but this first interview was disappointing. Later, when Fichte submitted his Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (“An Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation”) to Kant, the latter was favourably impressed by it and helped find a publisher (1792). Fichte’s name and preface were accidentally omitted from the first edition, and the work was ascribed by its earliest readers to Kant himself; when Kant corrected the mistake while commending the essay, Fichte’s reputation was made.
In the Versuch, Fichte sought to explain the conditions under which revealed religion is possible; his exposition turns upon the absolute requirements of the moral law. Religion itself is the belief in this moral law as divine, and such belief is a practical postulate, necessary in order to add force to the law. The revelation of this divine character of morality is possible only to someone in whom the lower impulses have been, or are, successful in overcoming reverence for the law. In such a case it is conceivable that a revelation might be given in order to add strength to the moral law. Religion ultimately then rests upon the practical reason and satisfies the needs of man, insofar as he stands under the moral law. In this conclusion are evident the prominence assigned by Fichte to the practical element and the tendency to make the moral requirements of the ego the ground for all judgment on reality.
In 1793 Fichte married Johanna Maria Rahn, whom he had met during his stay in Zürich. In the same year, he published anonymously two remarkable political works, of which Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die französische Revolution (“Contribution to the Correction of the Public’s Judgments Regarding the French Revolution”) was the more important. It was intended to explain the true nature of the French Revolution, to demonstrate how inextricably the right of liberty is interwoven with the very existence of man as an intelligent agent, and to point out the inherent progressiveness of the state and the consequent necessity of reform or amendment. As in the Versuch, the rational nature of man and the conditions necessary for its realization are made the standard for political philosophy.
The philosophy of Fichte falls chronologically into a period of residence in Jena (1793–98) and a period in Berlin (1799–1806), which are also different in their fundamental philosophic conceptions. The former period is marked by its ethical emphasis, the latter by the emergence of a mystical and theological theory of Being. Fichte was prompted to change his original position because he came to appreciate that religious faith surpasses moral reason. He was also influenced by the general trend that the development of thought took toward Romanticism.
In 1793 there was a vacant chair of philosophy at the University of Jena, and Fichte was called to fill it. To the ensuing period belongs his most important philosophical work. In this period he published, among other works: Einige Vorlesungen über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten (1794; The Vocation of the Scholar), lectures on the importance of the highest intellectual culture and on the duties that it imposed; several works on the science of knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre), which were revised and developed continually throughout his life; the practical Grundlage des Naturrechts nach Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre (1796; The Science of Rights); and Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre (1798; The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge), in which his moral philosophy, grounded in the notion of duty, is most notably expressed.
The system of 1794 was the most original and also the most characteristic work that Fichte produced. It was incited by Kant’s critical philosophy and especially by his Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788; Critique of Practical Reason . . .). From the outset it was less critical, precisely because it was more systematic, aiming at a self-sufficient doctrine in which the science of knowledge and ethics were intimately united. Fichte’s ambition was to demonstrate that practical (moral) reason is really (as Kant had only intimated) the root of reason in its entirety, the absolute ground of all knowledge as well as of humanity altogether. To prove this, he started from a supreme principle, the ego, which was supposed to be independent and sovereign, so that all other knowledge was deduced from it. Fichte did not assert that this supreme principle was self-evident but rather that it had to be postulated by pure thought. He followed, thereby, Kant’s doctrine that pure, practical reason postulates the existence of God, but he tried to transform Kant’s rational faith into a speculative knowledge on which he based both his theory of science and his ethics.
In 1795 Fichte became one of the editors of the Philosophisches Journal, and in 1798 his friend F.K. Forberg, a young, unknown philosopher, sent him an essay on the development of the idea of religion. Before printing this, Fichte, to prevent misunderstanding, composed a short preface, “On the Grounds of Our Belief in a Divine Government of the Universe,” in which God is defined as the moral order of the universe, the eternal law of right that is the foundation of all man’s being. The cry of atheism was raised, and the electoral government of Saxony, followed by all of the German states except Prussia, suppressed the Journal and demanded Fichte’s expulsion from Jena. After publishing two defenses, Fichte threatened to resign in case of reprimand. Much to his discomfort, his threat was taken as an offer to resign and was duly accepted.
Except for the summer of 1805, Fichte resided in Berlin from 1799 to 1806. Among his friends were the leaders of German Romanticism, A.W. and F. Schlegel and Friedrich Schleiermacher. His works of this period include Die Bestimmung des Menschen (1800; The Vocation of Man), in which he defines God as the infinite moral will of the universe who becomes conscious of himself in individuals; Der geschlossene Handelsstaat (also 1800), an intensely socialistic treatise in favour of tariff protection; two new versions of the Wissenschaftslehre (composed in 1801 and in 1804; published posthumously), marking a great change in the character of the doctrine; Die Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters (1806; lectures delivered 1804–05; The Characteristics of the Present Age), analyzing the Enlightenment and defining its place in the historical evolution of the general human consciousness but also indicating its defects and looking forward to belief in the divine order of the universe as the highest aspect of the life of reason; and Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben, oder auch die Religionslehre (1806; The Way Towards the Blessed Life). In this last-named work the union between the finite self-consciousness and the infinite ego, or God, is handled in a deeply religious fashion reminiscent of the Gospel According to John. The knowledge and love of God is declared to be the end of life. God is the All; the world of independent objects is the result of reflection or self-consciousness, by which the infinite unity is broken up. God is thus over and above the distinction of subject and object; man’s knowledge is but a reflex or picture of the infinite essence.
The French victories over the Prussians in 1806 drove Fichte from Berlin to Königsberg (where he lectured for a time), then to Copenhagen. He returned to Berlin in August 1807. From this time his published writings were practical in character; not until after the appearance of the Nachgelassene Werke (“Posthumous Works”) and of the Sämmtliche Werke (“Complete Works”) was the shape of his final speculations known. In 1807 he drew up a plan for the proposed new University of Berlin. In 1807–08 he delivered at Berlin his Reden an die deutsche Nation (Addresses to the German Nation), full of practical views on the only true foundation for national recovery and glory. From 1810 to 1812 he was rector of the new University of Berlin. During the great effort of Germany for national independence in 1813, he lectured “Über den Begriff des wahrhaften Krieges” (“On the Idea of a True War”).
At the beginning of 1814, Fichte caught a virulent hospital fever from his wife, who had volunteered for work as a hospital nurse; he died shortly thereafter.
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b4df0d4578d7b8dc0b8584bd1bc3d23d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Gottlob-Lehmann | Johann Gottlob Lehmann | Johann Gottlob Lehmann
Johann Gottlob Lehmann, (born Aug. 4, 1719, Langenhennersdorf, near Pirna, Saxony [Germany]—died Jan. 22, 1767, St. Petersburg, Russia), German geologist who contributed to the development of stratigraphy, the scientific study of order and sequence in bedded sedimentary rocks.
Lehmann received his M.D. from the University of Wittenberg in 1741 and established a medical practice in Dresden. In Saxony he discovered his real field of interest, mines and mining. His publications on ore deposits and their chemical composition won for him, in 1750, an official commission by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin to study mining procedures in the Prussian provinces. His explanation of the origin of mineral deposits in specific strata was summarized in the first geologic profile, published in 1756. He recognized that rocks do not fall in haphazard position but rather form in historical sequence; this principle serves as the foundation of modern stratigraphy. The Freiberg Bergakademie, a technical research institute, was founded in 1765 at Lehmann’s urging.
Lehmann was invited to St. Petersburg by the Imperial Academy of Sciences; in 1761 he became professor of chemistry at the university there and director of the academy’s natural-history collection. His investigations in Russia became the model for geologic explorations carried out after his early death.
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8aa9953ed79081b98a773275a58e491a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Graf-Diebitsch | Hans Karl von Diebitsch | Hans Karl von Diebitsch
Hans Karl von Diebitsch, German in full Hans Karl Friedrich Anton, Graf Diebitsch, Russian in full Ivan Ivanovich Dibich-Zabalkansky, (born May 13, 1785, Grossleipe, Silesia, Prussia—died June 10, 1831, Kleczewo, near Pułtusk, Poland), military officer whose Balkan campaigns determined the Russian victory in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29.
Although he was of German parentage and was educated at the Berlin cadet school, Diebitsch joined the Russian Army in 1801, and, after fighting against Napoleon in the battles of Austerlitz, Eylau, Friedland, and Smolensk, he acquired the rank of major general. He continued to serve in various military and diplomatic capacities as the Russians continued the war in western Europe (1812–14). In 1815 he attended the Congress of Vienna, at which the allies, having defeated Napoleon, reorganized Europe. Subsequently, Diebitsch became adjutant general to the Russian emperor Alexander I, chief of the Russian general staff (1824), a participant in the suppression of the Decembrist uprising, and a member of a secret committee formed by the emperor Nicholas I to examine administrative and social reform programs (1826–32).
After the Russo-Turkish War broke out (1828) and Diebitsch was given command of the Russian forces in Europe (February 1829), he defeated the Turks at Silistra on the Danube River, at the Kamchyk River near Varna, and at Burgas (all in Bulgaria). Continuing his campaign, he advanced westward, inflicting another defeat upon the Turks at Sliven; he then turned south, forcing Adrianople (Edirne) to surrender and precipitating the conclusion of the Treaty of Edirne (September 14, 1829), by which Turkey ceded the mouth of the Danube River and some territory in the Caucasus to Russia. For his victory Diebitsch was promoted to the rank of field marshal and given the name Zabalkansky to commemorate his march across the Balkans.
When the Poles staged an uprising against their Russian rulers (1830), Diebitsch led the Russian army that defeated the Poles at Grochów (February 25, 1831) and at Ostroleka (May 20, 1831), but he died from cholera before the Poles capitulated.
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106db6c2b2804818839b7b7c720eb696 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Hinrich-Wichern | Johann Hinrich Wichern | Johann Hinrich Wichern
Johann Hinrich Wichern proclaimed, “There is a Christian Socialism,” at the Kirchentag Church Convention in Wittenberg [Germany] in 1848, the year of the publication of the Communist Manifesto and a wave of revolutions across Europe, and created the “Inner Mission” in order to address “works…
In 1848 Johann Wichern, founder of the Inner Mission, proclaimed that “love no less than faith is the church’s indispensable mark.”
In Germany, Johann Hinrich Wichern, a Lutheran pastor and teacher, founded a rescue village near Hamburg for delinquent boys in 1833. At a Kirchentag (church rally) of the German Evangelical Church in Wittenberg in 1848, Wichern urged that the church minister to the physical and social needs…
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80b60580805c13f180d42f6bb6cc4d3b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Jakob-Balmer | Johann Jakob Balmer | Johann Jakob Balmer
Johann Jakob Balmer, (born May 1, 1825, Lausanne, Switz.—died March 12, 1898, Basel), Swiss mathematician who discovered a formula basic to the development of atomic theory and the field of atomic spectroscopy.
A secondary-school teacher in Basel from 1859 until his death, Balmer also lectured (1865–90) on geometry at the University of Basel. In 1885 he announced a simple formula representing the wavelengths of the spectral lines of hydrogen—the “Balmer series” (see spectral line series). Why the formula held true, however, was not explained until 1913, when Niels Bohr found that it fit into and supported his theory of discrete energy states within the hydrogen atom.
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7646e80b394a3d41de63097a5ec68ffc | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Kalb | Johann Kalb | Johann Kalb
Johann Kalb, byname Baron de Kalb, (born June 29, 1721, Hüttendorf, near Erlangen [Germany]—died August 19, 1780, Camden, South Carolina, U.S.), prominent German officer who fought for the Continental Army in the American Revolution.
Of peasant antecedents, Kalb was schooled at Kriegenbronn and left home at age 16. He received his first military training in 1743 as a lieutenant in a German regiment of the French infantry, calling himself Jean de Kalb. After a number of years of outstanding service (notably in the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War), he was asked, in 1768, by the duc de Choiseul, head of the French Foreign Ministry, to undertake a secret visit to the 13 British colonies in North America to ascertain their attitude toward Great Britain. His four-month investigation resulted in a number of detailed and astute reports. Eager to return to the New World after going back to Europe, Kalb in 1776 secured a promise of a commission in the Continental Army from Silas Deane, American commissioner to France. He reached Philadelphia in July 1777 and was eventually appointed a major general by the Continental Congress. He became a strong admirer of General George Washington and served with him through the trying winter at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. As second in command to the marquis de Lafayette, he participated in an abortive expedition against Canada (1778).
In April 1780 Kalb was ordered from Morristown, New Jersey, to the relief of Charleston, South Carolina, but the city fell to the British while he was marching south. At Deep River, North Carolina, he was joined in July by General Horatio Gates, commander of the southern department. Kalb urged an immediate attack, but Gates waited until the British forces knew of his presence and then on August 14 marched against them at Camden. The British drove Gates from the field, but Kalb remained in the battle and died five days later from wounds received there.
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3263ae462d5ffcc1e220a159faec51a6 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Kunckel-von-Lowenstjern | Johann Kunckel von Löwenstjern | Johann Kunckel von Löwenstjern
Johann Kunckel von Löwenstjern, Kunckel also spelled Kunkel, (born 1630, Rendsburg, Ger.—died March 20, 1702/03, near Parnu), German chemist who, about 1678, duplicated Hennig Brand’s isolation of phosphorus. A court chemist and apothecary, he later directed the laboratory and glassworks at Brandenburg. At Stockholm King Charles XI made him a baron (1693) and member of the council of mines.
He discovered a method of making ruby glass and studied putrefaction, fermentation, the nature of salts, and the preparation of pure metals. He derided the idea of the universal solvent (alkahest) and denounced the deceptions of alchemists but apparently believed it possible to transmute metals.
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7fd3271b70167d0b5a997667ba3aad6e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Lorenz-von-Mosheim | Johann Lorenz von Mosheim | Johann Lorenz von Mosheim
Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, (born Oct. 9, 1694, Lübeck—died Sept. 9, 1755, Göttingen, Hanover), German Lutheran theologian who founded the pragmatic school of church historians, which insisted on objective, critical treatment of original sources. In 1723 Mosheim became professor at Helmstedt and in 1747 was made professor of divinity and chancellor of the university at Göttingen.
Departing from the established method of writing history as a simple narration of unquestioned events, Mosheim called for fresh attention to wide historical movements and pervasive themes. Among his 85 works written in Latin and German on church history is Institutiones Historiae Ecclesiasticae Antiquae et Recentioris (1755; Institutes of Ecclesiastical History).
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e6e0db88f2761cabc0addd34a02e8861 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Ludwig-Krapf | Johann Ludwig Krapf | Johann Ludwig Krapf
Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann of the Church Missionary Society, who had worked inland from Mombasa and had, in the 1840s and ’50s, journeyed to the foothills of Mount Kenya and Kilimanjaro, were followed by a British Methodist mission. Roman Catholic missionaries reached Zanzibar…
…of the Church Missionary Society, Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann. They established a mission station at Rabai, a short distance inland from Mombasa. In 1848 Rebmann became the first European to see Kilimanjaro, and in 1849 Krapf ventured still farther inland and saw Mount Kenya. These were isolated journeys,…
…of the Church Missionary Society, Johann Ludwig Krapf and Johannes Rebmann, who in the late 1840s reached Kilimanjaro. It was a fellow missionary, Jakob Erhardt, whose famous “slug” map (showing, on Arab information, a vast shapeless inland lake) helped stimulate the interest of the British explorers Richard Burton and John…
…Rebmann, and the following year Johann L. Krapf, also a German missionary, obtained a view of the snows of Mount Kenya. In 1888 the Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley glimpsed the Ruwenzori through a break in their cloud cover and equated them with the Mountains of the Moon of Ptolemy.
German missionaries Johannes Rebmann and Johann Ludwig Krapf, although the news that there were snow-capped mountains so close to the Equator was not believed until more than a decade later. The Kibo summit was first reached in 1889 by the German geographer Hans Meyer and the Austrian mountaineer Ludwig Purtscheller.…
Johann Ludwig Krapf was the first European to see the mountain (1849), and it was partially climbed by the Hungarian explorer Sámuel, Gróf (count) Teleki (1887), and the British geologist John Walter Gregory (1893). The British geographer Halford John Mackinder was the first to reach…
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9874c6c1801f8291abf5d9bdaed6d4b5 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Martin-Lappenberg | Johann Martin Lappenberg | Johann Martin Lappenberg
Johann Martin Lappenberg, (born July 30, 1794, Hamburg [Germany]—died Nov. 28, 1865, Hamburg), German archivist who was also a prolific scholar of German and English history.
Lappenberg was intended for his father’s profession, medicine, and studied in Edinburgh and London, where he conceived the ambition of entering British politics or serving in that country’s diplomatic service. He therefore studied law at the universities of Berlin and Göttingen but became convinced after visiting Britain again that his ambition must remain unfulfilled. Returning to Hamburg, Lappenberg was appointed keeper (curator) of the city’s historical archives in 1823. He published copiously, contributing editions of early documents to the series Monumenta Germaniae Historica and to the archives of the Society for Early German History. He meanwhile conducted assiduous research on the Hamburg archives and on the history of the Hanseatic League. His Geschichte von England, 2 vol. (1834–37; A History of England), proved a useful work to historians until the end of the 19th century.
Lappenberg became government secretary to the Hamburg Senate, and in 1850 he represented his native city at the Frankfurt parliament.
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ee3aa4553118648e19f1a66260a5b659 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Martin-Miller | Johann Martin Miller | Johann Martin Miller
Johann Martin Miller, (born Dec. 3, 1750, Imperial City of Ulm [Germany]—died June 21, 1814, Ulm, Württemberg), German poet, novelist, and preacher known for moralizing, sentimental novels and folk song-like poems.
Miller studied theology at Göttingen where, in 1772, he and other students established the Göttinger Hainbund, a group that met to discuss their poems and to further the ideals of friendship, virtue, freedom, love of fatherland, and an interest in Germanic history. The group espoused many of the tenets of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement centred on J.W. von Goethe. Of the three novels Miller published in 1776—Beytrag zur Geschichte der Zärtlichkeit (“Contribution to the History of Tenderness”); Siegwart. Eine Klostergeschichte, 2 parts (Siegwart, A Tale); and Briefwechsel dreyer akademischer Freunde (“Correspondence of Three Academic Friends”)—the first two are considered imitative successors to Goethe’s 1774 novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (“The Sorrows of Young Werther”). Miller returned to Ulm, teaching at the gymnasium there, serving as a minister, and eventually becoming dean of Ulm in 1810. Continuing to write, he published a moral weekly from 1779 to 1781 and produced two more novels, a book of poems, and two collections of sermons.
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367c564194329c00dbac20390e920e27 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Mayrhofer | Johann Mayrhofer | Johann Mayrhofer
…introduced him to the poet Johann Mayrhofer. He also induced the young and brilliant Franz von Schober to visit Schubert. Late in 1815 Schober went to the schoolhouse in the Säulengasse, found Schubert in front of a class with his manuscripts piled about him, and inflamed the young composer, a…
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38ab3f5238425c37b296ce89efbe1c70 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Melchior-Dinglinger | Johann Melchior Dinglinger | Johann Melchior Dinglinger
…II the Strong established under Johann Melchior Dinglinger a court workshop that produced jewels and enamelled goldwork unequalled since the Renaissance; and the gold snuffboxes made by Johann Christian Neuber rivalled those of the Parisian goldsmiths.
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f6b29989df33cc67b137d4ffc64ff2d0 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Michael-Moscherosch | Johann Michael Moscherosch | Johann Michael Moscherosch
Johann Michael Moscherosch, pseudonym Philander Von Sittewald, (born March 5, 1601, Willstädt, near Strassburg [now in Germany]—died April 4, 1669, Worms), German Lutheran satirist whose bitterly brilliant but partisan writings graphically describe life in a Germany ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). His satires, which at times are tedious, also show an overwhelming moral zeal added to a sense of mission.
Moscherosch was educated at Strassburg (now Strasbourg) and was for some years tutor in the family of the Count of Leiningen-Dagsburg. He held various government offices, including those of president of the chancellery and counselor to the chamber of finances (1656) to the Count of Hanau and privy councillor to the Countess of Hesse-Kassel.
Moscherosch’s most famous work, Wunderliche und wahrhafftige Gesichte Philanders von Sittewald (1641–43; “Peculiar and True Visions of Philander von Sittewald”), displays his satirical ability. Modeled on Los sueños (1627; “Dreams”) of Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, it lampoons the customs and culture of the Germany of his day from the standpoint of a staunch Lutheran patriot. Another work is the Insomnis Cura Parentum (1643), a religious tract addressed to his family that reflects his strict Lutheran piety. Moscherosch was also a member of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft (“Productive Society”), which was founded for the purification of the German language and the fostering of German literature.
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bb0774b662d9868989980723918a1619 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Michael-Rottmayr | Johann Michael Rottmayr | Johann Michael Rottmayr
The frescoes by Johann Michael Rottmayr in the castle of Vranov in Moravia (1695) and in Breslau (now Wrocław; 1704–06) constitute a prelude to the great development of Baroque painting in the Habsburg domains. There the vigorous and extremely colourful frescoes are closely integrated with the architecture. The…
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0429688cab407683351cba82666511a0 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Rudolf-Glauber | Johann Rudolf Glauber | Johann Rudolf Glauber
Johann Rudolf Glauber, (born 1604, Karlstadt, Bavaria [now in Germany]—died March 10, 1668, Amsterdam, Neth.), German-Dutch chemist, sometimes called the German Boyle; i.e., the father of chemistry.
Settling in Holland, Glauber made his living chiefly by the sale of secret chemicals and medicinals. He prepared hydrochloric acid from common salt and sulfuric acid and pointed out the virtues of the residue, sodium sulfate—sal mirabile, or Glauber’s salt; he also noted the formation of nitric acid from potassium nitrate and sulfuric acid.
Glauber prepared many substances, made useful observations on dyeing, and described the preparation of tartar emetic. He urged that Germany’s natural resources be developed and gave examples of such developments. His writings were reissued as Glauberus Concentratus (1715).
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