Notable Women in the Life Sciences


Book Description

This volume features substantive biographical essays on 97 world and American women scientists who have made significant contributions to the life sciences from antiquity to the present, with the emphasis on 20th century women. The essays go beyond the basic facts found in standard biographical dictionaries, however. Developmental influences, obstacles faced and overcome, and the efforts of these women to contribute to their chosen professions in spite of sometimes overwhelming disapproval of the establishment come alive in these portraits. Many of the living scientists profiled contributed interviews and autobiographical statements, which adds a vital and unique element to their profiles. Entries, written by 63 practicing scientists and researchers, explain the scientific work clearly in terms familiar to general readers and high school students. Each entry provides a fact box outlining major life events, including educational and career milestones, and concludes with sources for further reading. Twenty-nine photographs complement the text. Disciplines covered include anatomy, bacteriology, biology, botany, embryology, entomology, genetics, horticulture, medicine, ornithology, pathology, pharmacology, physiology, and zoology. Subjects were selected on the basis of historical importance and recognition awards such as Blackwell, Lasker and Watermann prizes, Nobel prizes, MacArthur Foundation Genius awards, and the National Medal of Science. Seen across time and disciplines, the lives of these dedicated scientists can serve as role models for young women pursuing careers in science.




Modern Chinese Artists


Book Description

An important reference source for scholars and students of modern Chinese art, collectors, museums and libraries, dealers and auction houses. It includes biographical entries for approximately 800 Chinese artists who grew up or were trained in China and who are likely to be represented in collections, exhibitions, and auctions within and outside China.







The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law


Book Description

This book is the first to gather in a single volume concise biographies of the most eminent men and women in the history of American law. Encompassing a wide range of individuals who have devised, replenished, expounded, and explained law, The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law presents succinct and lively entries devoted to more than 700 subjects selected for their significant and lasting influence on American law. Casting a wide net, editor Roger K. Newman includes individuals from around the country, from colonial times to the present, encompassing the spectrum of ideologies from left-wing to right, and including a diversity of racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Entries are devoted to the living and dead, the famous and infamous, many who upheld the law and some who broke it. Supreme Court justices, private practice lawyers, presidents, professors, journalists, philosophers, novelists, prosecutors, and others--the individuals in the volume are as diverse as the nation itself. Entries written by close to 600 expert contributors outline basic biographical facts on their subjects, offer well-chosen anecdotes and incidents to reveal accomplishments, and include brief bibliographies. Readers will turn to this dictionary as an authoritative and useful resource, but they will also discover a volume that delights and entertains. Listed in The Yale Biographical Dictionary of American Law: John Ashcroft Robert H. Bork Bill Clinton Ruth Bader Ginsburg Patrick Henry J. Edgar Hoover James Madison Thurgood Marshall Sandra Day O'Connor Janet Reno Franklin D. Roosevelt Julius and Ethel Rosenberg John T. Scopes O. J. Simpson Alexis de Tocqueville Scott Turow And more than 700 others




The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure


Book Description

A darkly comic, satirical reference book about writers who never made it into the literary canon A signal event of literary scholarship, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure compiles the biographies of history’s most notable cases of a complete lack of literary success. As such, it is the world’s leading authority on the subject. Compiled in one volume by C. D. Rose, a well-educated person universally acknowledged in parts of England as the world’s pre-eminent expert on inexpert writers, the book culls its information from lost or otherwise ignored archives scattered around the globe, as well as the occasional dustbin. The dictionary amounts to a monumental accomplishment: the definitive appreciation of history’s least accomplished writers. Thus immortalized beyond deserving and rescued from hard-earned obscurity, the authors presented in this historic volume comprise a who’s who of the talentless and deluded, their stories timeless litanies of abject psychosis, misapplication, and delinquency. It is, in short, a treasure.




A Social Biography of Contemporary Innovative Poetry Communities


Book Description

This book offers a new reading of Marcell Mauss’ and Lewis Hyde’s theories of poetry as gift, exploring poetry exchanges within 20th and 21st century communities of poets, publishers, audiences and readers operating along a gift economy. The text considers trans-Atlantic case studies across fields of performance and ecopoetics, small press publishing and poetry institutions, with focus on Joan Retallack, Bob Holman, Anne Waldman, Bob Cobbing, and feminist performance. Elizabeth-Jane Burnett focuses on innovative poetry that resists commodification, drawing on ethnography to show parallels with gift giving tribal societies; she also considers the ethical, philosophical and psychological motivations for such exchanges with particular reference to poethics. This book will appeal to researchers in modern poetry, poetry teachers, advanced students of modern literature, and those with an interest in poetry.




A Biographical Dictionary of Women's Movements and Feminisms


Book Description

This Biographical Dictionary describes the lives, works and aspirations of more than 150 women and men who were active in, or part of, women’s movements and feminisms in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe. Thus, it challenges the widely held belief that there was no historical feminism in this part of Europe. These innovative and often moving biographical portraits not only show that feminists existed here, but also that they were widespread and diverse, and included Romanian princesses, Serbian philosophers and peasants, Latvian and Slovakian novelists, Albanian teachers, Hungarian Christian social workers and activists of the Catholic women’s movement, Austrian factory workers, Bulgarian feminist scientists and socialist feminists, Russian radicals, philanthropists, militant suffragists and Bolshevik activists, prominent writers and philosophers of the Ottoman era, as well as Turkish republican leftist political activists and nationalists, internationally recognized Greek feminist leaders, Estonian pharmacologists and science historians, Slovenian ‘literary feminists,’ Czech avant-garde painters, Ukrainian feminist scholars, Polish and Czech Senate Members, and many more. Their stories together constitute a rich tapestry of feminist activity and redress a serious imbalance in the historiography of women’s movements and feminisms.




Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders


Book Description

This important reference tool surveys the multifaceted field of peace activism from 1800 to 1980. The dictionary defines the parameters of peace advocacy, surveys the different approaches taken in antiwar efforts, and provides information on many individuals who have either contributed to organized peace efforts or who have questioned war and organized violence. More than 250 authors from 15 nations have written 750 biographical entries about public advocates of peace; antiwar activists; leaders in organizations devoted to world peace; those who have worked to prevent armed conflicts; and writers, artists, and many others who have played major roles in the cause of peace. Although many of the subjects come from the United States and Europe, important subjects from Canada, Latin America, Africa, East Asia, and South Asia are also represented. Besides providing basic biographical information, each entry concentrates on the subject's work, ideas, and activity as a peace leader and also contains a short bibliography of works about the subject, works by the subject, and manuscript materials if available. Carefully indexed and cross-referenced, the volume contains an introductory overview of nineteenth- and twentieth-century peace efforts, gives a selective chronology of peace movements, and provides an appendix listing the peace leaders by country. No other volume provides such a comprehensive survey of peace leaders throughout the world as this one. The Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders will undoubtedly prove to be an invaluable research and reference tool for scholars and students of international relations, international law, and political philosophy.




Biographical Dictionary


Book Description