Seneca: Philosophical works and tragedies: De brevitate vitae (On the Brevity of Life) demonstrates that the human span is long enough if time is properly employed—which it seldom is. Best written and most compelling are the Ad Lucilium epistulae morales (Moral Letters to Lucilius). Those 124 brilliant essays treat a range of moral…

de Broglie wave, any aspect of the behaviour or properties of a material object that varies in time or space in conformity with the mathematical equations that describe waves. By analogy with the wave and particle behaviour of light that had already been established experimentally, the French

Inge de Bruijn is a Dutch swimmer whose eight Olympic medals (2000, 2004) and five world championships made her one of the most successful competitors in women’s swimming history. De Bruijn began swimming at age 7 and participated in her first international meet at age 12. She joined swimming’s

Robert Mannyng was an early English poet and author of Handlyng Synne, a confessional manual, and of the chronicle Story of England. The works are preserved independently in several manuscripts, none of certain provenance. The author is probably to be identified with a Sir Robert de Brunne,

Manchester City FC: 2008 financial takeover: …Yaya Touré, David Silva, and Kevin De Bruyne, and forward Sergio Agüero.

the Ten: Dewing, Joseph De Camp, Frank W. Benson, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Edmund Tarbell, Robert Reid, and E.E. Simmons. When Twachtman died in 1902, William Merritt Chase replaced him.

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

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

Italian literature: Fiction at the turn of the 21st century: …two extremely professional authors—cosmopolitan minimalist Andrea De Carlo and painstaking observer and stylist Daniele Del Giudice—were “discovered” in the early 1980s by Italo Calvino. In novels such as Macno (1984; Eng. trans. Macno) and Yucatan (1986; Eng. trans. Yucatan), De Carlo, a cinematographic recorder of surfaces, deliberately created and manipulated…

Raoul Walsh: Last films: …up with a spy (Yvonne De Carlo). Although the thinly disguised Huey Long drama A Lion Is in the Streets (1953) did not deliver on its promise, it offered mesmerizing performances by Cagney as the demagogue and Anne Francis as the temptress Flamingo McManamee. Gun Fury (also 1953) was…

Giovanni Boccaccio: Petrarch and Boccaccio’s mature years: …biographies of famous women; and De casibus virorum illustrium (1355–74; “On the Fates of Famous Men”), on the inevitable catastrophe awaiting all who are too fortunate.

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

Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus: …mind of the writer) is De ceremoniis aulae Byzantinae, basically a minute description of the elaborate ceremonial and processions that made the emperor a hieratic symbol of the state and strove to impress foreigners with his grandeur. There is no doubt that it helped Byzantium in its relations with the…

Second Battle of Ypres: The forces at Ypres: Armand de Ceuninck. The remainder of the Belgian army extended north through the area that had been flooded during the First Battle of Ypres. Opposite the Allies was the German Fourth Army under Albrecht, duke of Württemberg.

Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian painter who, with Carlo Carrà and Giorgio Morandi, founded the style of Metaphysical painting. After studying art in Athens and Florence, de Chirico moved to Germany in 1906 and entered the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. His early style was influenced by Arnold

Pomponius Mela: …on geography in classical Latin, De situ orbis (“A Description of the World”), also known as De chorographia (“Concerning Chorography”). Written about 43 or 44 ce, it remained influential until the beginning of the age of exploration, 13 centuries later. Though probably intended for the general reader, Mela’s geography was…

Christiaan Huygens: …publications in mathematics, especially his De Circuli Magnitudine Inventa of 1654, and by his discovery in 1659 of the true shape of the rings of Saturn—made possible by the improvements he had introduced in the construction of the telescope with his new method of grinding and polishing lenses. Using his…

Thomas Hobbes: Intellectual development of Thomas Hobbes: …Homine (1658; “Concerning Man”), and De Cive (1642; “Concerning the Citizen”)—was his attempt to arrange the various pieces of natural science, as well as psychology and politics, into a hierarchy, ranging from the most general and fundamental to the most specific. Although logically constituting the last part of his system,…

The City of God, philosophical treatise vindicating Christianity, written by the medieval philosopher St. Augustine as De civitate Dei contra paganos (Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans) about 413–426 ce. A masterpiece of Western culture, The City of God was written in response to pagan

De claris mulieribus, work by Giovanni Boccaccio, written about 1360–74. One of the many Latin works the author produced after his meeting with Petrarch, De claris mulieribus contains the biographies of more than 100 notable women. In it Boccaccio decried the practice of sending women without

Cinna: …based on a passage in De clementia by Seneca the Younger, the Neoclassical tragedy recounts a plot to assassinate the Roman emperor Augustus and the mercy he shows to the conspirators after their arrest. It is noted for its elevated language and powerful characterizations.

Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar was a French mathematician. In 1820, while serving in the French army, he built his first arithmometer, which could perform basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The first mechanical calculator to gain widespread use, it became a commercial

Nonius Marcellus: …and lexicographer, author of the De compendiosa doctrina, a lexicon in which are preserved extracts from the works of many earlier writers, which Nonius used for illustration. It consists of 20 chapters—the 16th is lost. The first 12 deal with language and grammar, and the brief remaining chapters are on…

Dionysius of Halicarnassus: …essay “Peri syntheseos onomaton” (“On the Arrangement of Words”; often cited by its Latin title, “De compositione verborum”) is the only extant ancient discussion of word order. Dionysius was a mediocre historian but a first-rate literary critic who examined authors’ style and historical context.

Nicholas Of Cusa: …at the council he dedicated De concordantia catholica (1433; “On Catholic Concordance”), in which he expressed support for the supremacy of the general councils of the church over the authority of the papacy. In the same work he discussed the harmony of the church, drawing a pattern for priestly concord…

Belgian literature: Prose: …Hugo Brems, Hugo Bousset, and Herman de Coninck. Brems proved an astute and skeptical chronicler of contemporary literature in general, Bousset championed postmodernist fragmentation and formal experimentation in prose fiction, and de Coninck became the most eloquent advocate of the muted, accessible, and ironic poetry of Neorealist vintage.

William Ames: …Ejus Jure vel Casibus (1632; Conscience, 1639). The latter text was considered for many years by the Dutch Reformed Church to be a standard treatise on Christian ethics and the variety of ethical situations faced by believers.

Cicero: Philosophy of Cicero: …subjects were astonishing: the lost De consolatione, prompted by his daughter’s death; Hortensius, an exhortation to the study of philosophy, which proved instrumental in St. Augustine’s conversion; the difficult Academica (Academic Philosophy), which defends suspension of judgment; De finibus, (is it pleasure, virtue, or something more complex?); and

fable, parable, and allegory: Diversity of forms: Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy (c. ad 524) and Dante’s The New Life (c. 1293) interrupt the prose discourse with short poems. Verse and prose then interact to give a new thematic perspective. A related mixing of elements appears in Menippean satire (those writings deriving from the…

Stoicism: Revival of Stoicism in modern times: His treatises De constantia (1584; On Constancy) and Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae libri sex (1589; Six Books of Politics or Political Instruction) were widely known in many editions and translations. His defense of Stoic doctrine in Manuductio ad Stoicam Philosophiam (1604; Digest of Stoic Philosophy) and Physiologia Stoicorum (1604; Physics…

Cicero: Letters and poetry: …epics De consulatu suo (On His Consulship) and De temporibus suis (On His Life and Times), which were criticized in antiquity for their self-praise. Cicero’s verse is technically important; he refined the hexameter, using words of two or three syllables at the end of a line, so that the…

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

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

Dionysius the Carthusian: …authorities in writing his classic, De contemplatione. For Dionysius, mystical contemplation was an infusion of the gift of wisdom by the Holy Spirit, for which the soul could be prepared by the renunciation of all save God. A prolific writer on dogmatic, ascetical, and mystical theology, he also sent letters…

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

humanism: Desiderius Erasmus: …copia verborum et rerum (On Copia of Words and Ideas) and published his satirical Moriae encomium (Praise of Folly). These two works have much in common. De copia concerns the stylistic strategy of creating abundant variations on common ideas. Praise of Folly is a case in point: a book-length…

Thomas Hobbes: Intellectual development of Thomas Hobbes: His great trilogy—De Corpore (1655; “Concerning Body”), De Homine (1658; “Concerning Man”), and De Cive (1642; “Concerning the Citizen”)—was his attempt to arrange the various pieces of natural science, as well as psychology and politics, into a hierarchy, ranging from the most general and fundamental to the…

Ratramnus: …to write two major books: De corpore et sanguine Domini (“Concerning the Body and Blood of the Lord”) and De praedestinatione. Showing remarkable originality, De corpore is partially a reply to De corpore et sanguine Christi (“Concerning Christ’s Body and Blood”), written by his abbot, Paschasius Radbertus. Ratramnus proposed that…

Nicholas Of Clémanges: The essay De corrupto ecclesiae statu (“On the Corrupt State of the Church”), formerly attributed to him, is of dubious authenticity, according to more recent scholarship. His works, including the collection of stylistic letters on controversial issues and several pieces of poetry, were edited by J.M. Lydius…

Alec Guinness was a British actor famous for the variety and excellence of his stage and screen characterizations. Tall and unremarkable in appearance, he played a great range of characters throughout his long career. His trademarks were subtle but telling facial expressions and exquisitely nuanced

Middle Eastern religion: Literary sources of knowledge of ancient Middle Eastern religion: The Greek satirist Lucian’s De Dea Syra (“Concerning the Syrian Goddess”) is of enduring value for an understanding of Canaanite religion. The writings of Herodotus, the 5th-century-bc Greek historian, remain an indispensable source for the cultural history and religion of the ancient Middle East. And owing to the discovery…

history of logic: Transmission of Greek logic to the Latin West: A short De dialectica (“On Dialectic”), doubtfully attributed to St. Augustine (354–430), shows evidence of Stoic influence, although it had little influence of its own. The pseudo-Augustinian Decem categoriae (“Ten Categories”) is a late 4th-century Latin paraphrase of a Greek compendium of the Categories. In the late…

Italian literature: The age of humanism: …excellentia hominis (completed in 1452; On the Dignity of Man) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oratio de hominis dignitate (written 1486; Oration on the Dignity of Man). The humanist vision evolved during this period condemned many religious opinions of the Middle Ages still widely prevalent: monastic ideals of isolation and…

Publius Nigidius Figulus: …work on Roman religion, De diis (“Concerning the Gods”), in at least 19 books, the earliest comprehensive work on Roman religion; Commentarii grammatici, in at least 29 books, a loose collection of notes concerned with, among other matters, synonyms, inflection, orthography, word formation, syntax, and etymology; De extis (“Concerning Sacrificial…

automobile: Other European developments: In France the giants were De Dion-Bouton, Peugeot SA, and Renault (the last two are still in existence). The Italians were later in the field: the Stefanini-Martina of 1896 is thought of as the foundation of the industry in Italy, and Isotta-Fraschini was founded about 1898.

encyclopaedia: Three stages of development: …Spanish philosopher Juan Luis Vives’s De disciplinis (1531), in which all the compiler’s arguments were grounded on nature and made no appeal to religious authority. Although compositors and printers were not immune from mistakes, the printing press eliminated one of the most vexatious problems: the introduction or perpetuation of textual…

Nithard: The resulting four-volume Historiae or De dissensionibus filiorum Ludovici pii (“On the Dissensions of the Sons of Louis the Pious”) deals with the discord between the sons of Louis during the years 840–843.

Theophilus: …a German monk who wrote De diversis artibus (c. 1110–40; also called Schedula diversarum artium), an exhaustive account of the techniques of almost all the known crafts of the first half of the 12th century. From his writings it can be deduced that Theophilus was of the Benedictine order and…

Platonism: Medieval Platonism: …the Periphyseon (usually known as De divisione naturae [On the Division of Nature]), was not much read and ceased to be copied after his condemnation in 1210. But a considerable part of the text circulated in the form of anonymous glosses to the Latin translations of the Pseudo-Dionysius (of which…

Hincmar of Reims: …to repudiate his wife, wrote De divortio Lotharii et Teutbergae (“On the Divorce of Lothar and Teutberga”), the fullest apology to that time for Christian opposition to divorce.

Nicholas Of Cusa: In De docta ignorantia (1440; “On Learned Ignorance”) he described the learned man as one who is aware of his own ignorance. In this and other works he typically borrowed symbols from geometry to demonstrate his points, as in his comparison of man’s search for truth…

John Milton: Works on history and theology: …and published in 1825 as A Treatise on Christian Doctrine. The comprehensive and systematic theology presented in this work reflects Milton’s close engagement with Scripture, from which he draws numerous proof texts in order to buttress his concepts of the Godhead and of moral theology, among others. Like his historical…

rhetoric: The Middle Ages: Book IV of On Christian Doctrine is usually considered the first rhetorical theory specifically designed for the minister. Of course, the kind of truth to which Augustine sought to give verbal effectiveness was the “revealed” truth as contained in the Scriptures. The first three books of On Christian…

John Wycliffe: Political activities and theories: …divine and civil dominion (De dominio divino libri tres and Tractatus de civili dominio), in which he argued men exercised “dominion” (the word is used of possession and authority) straight from God and that if they were in a state of mortal sin, then their dominion was in appearance…

Severo Sarduy: …donde son los cantantes (1967; From Cuba with a Song). The book includes three narratives that encompass the entire history of Cuba and aspire to give a global view of its culture. An even more experimental novel followed, Cobra (1972; Eng. trans. Cobra), where the setting is a transvestite theatre…

property law: England: …of the 13th century (statute De donis conditionalibus, 1285) allowed a conveyor of land to limit its inheritance to the direct descendants of the conveyee and to claim it back if the conveyee’s direct line died out (fee tail). (See also entail.) In one of their few deviations from the…

property law: England: …of the 13th century (statute De donis conditionalibus, 1285) allowed a conveyor of land to limit its inheritance to the direct descendants of the conveyee and to claim it back if the conveyee’s direct line died out (fee tail). (See also entail.) In one of their few deviations from the…

St. Augustine: Controversial writings: …and De dono perseverantiae (429; The Gift of Perseverance).

Jan Hus: Hus and the Western Schism: …treatises was De ecclesia (The Church). He also wrote a large number of treatises in Czech and a collection of sermons entitled Postilla.

Giles of Rome: …a defense of the pope, De ecclesiastica potestate (“On the Church Power”); he proposed that the pope must have direct political power over the whole of mankind.

calendar: Complex cycles: …in 1583 under the title Opus de emendatione temporum.

Adelard Of Bath: In his Platonizing dialogue De eodem et diverso (“On Sameness and Diversity”), his atomism and his attempt to reconcile the reality of universals with that of individuals distinguish him from other Platonists. His Quaestiones naturales (76 discussions of human nature, meteorology, astronomy, botany, and zoology) are based on Arabic…

Prochorus Cydones: Prochorus’ own treatise, De essentia et operatione Dei (“On the Essence and Activity of God”), vigorously disputed the mystical theology of another Athonite monk, Gregory Palamas. Cited before the Synod of Constantinople in 1368 by the Palamite patriarch Philotheus Coccinus, the brothers Cydones were charged with heresy; Prochorus…

Gildas: His De excidio et conquestu Britanniae (“The Overthrow and Conquest of Britain”), one of the few sources for the country’s post-Roman history, contains the story of the British leader Ambrosius Aurelianus and the defeat of the Saxons at Mons Badonicus. Gildas then condemned the corrupt priests…

autopsy: History of autopsy: …work of Andreas Vesalius (De humani corporis fabrica, 1543) that made it possible to distinguish the abnormal, as such (e.g., an aneurysm), from the normal anatomy. Leonardo da Vinci dissected 30 corpses and noted “abnormal anatomy”; Michelangelo, too, performed a number of dissections. Earlier, in the 13th century, Frederick…

de facto, a legal concept used to refer to what happens in reality or in practice, as opposed to de jure (“from the law”), which refers to what is actually notated in legal code. For example, a de facto leader is someone who exerts authority over a country but whose legitimacy is broadly rejected,

census: Modern census procedure: …legal residence, whereas a “de facto” census allocates them to the place where enumerated—normally where they spend the night of the day enumerated. By either method, the reported territorial distribution is according to where people sleep (nighttime population) rather than where they work (daytime population). For this reason the…

Pietro Pomponazzi: …several reputedly miraculous phenomena, and De fato (1567; “On Fate”), which discusses predestination and free will.

filtration: Special techniques: …easily filtered solids such as diatomaceous earth or bone black may be added to the slurry to improve filtration.

Titus Pomponius Atticus: …not an orthodox Epicurean; in De finibus (“On Goals”), Cicero interrupts an anti-Epicurean polemic to praise Atticus as a connoisseur of Roman memorabilia.

Laura de Force Gordon was an American lawyer, editor, and reformer, one of the first women in the American West to speak and campaign for women’s rights, who also pioneered in professions normally reserved for men. Laura de Force attended local schools in her hometown. In 1862 she married Charles

Lee de Forest was an American inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, which made possible live radio broadcasting and became the key component of all radio, telephone, radar, television, and computer systems before the invention of the transistor in 1947. Although de Forest was bitter over the

Carl Jacobi: Jacobi’s De Formatione et Proprietatibus Determinantium (1841; “Concerning the Structure and Properties of Determinants”) made pioneering contributions to the theory of determinants. He invented the functional determinant (formed from the n2 differential coefficients of n given functions with n independent variables) that bears his name and…

Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente: Fabricius’ De Formato Foetu (1600; “On the Formation of the Fetus”), summarizing his investigations of the fetal development of many animals, including man, contained the first detailed description of the placenta and opened the field of comparative embryology. He also gave the first full account of…

Johannes Kepler: Astronomical work of Johannes Kepler: …De Fundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus (1601; Concerning the More Certain Fundamentals of Astrology), this work proposed to make astrology “more certain” by basing it on new physical and harmonic principles. It showed both the importance of astrological practice at the imperial court and Kepler’s intellectual independence in rejecting much of what…

Edgar Degas was a French painter, sculptor, and printmaker who was prominent in the Impressionist group and widely celebrated for his images of Parisian life. Degas’s principal subject was the human—especially the female—figure, which he explored in works ranging from the somber portraits of his

Giulio Andreotti: He was the author of De Gasperi e il suo tempo (1956; “De Gasperi and His Time”) and other books.

Alcide De Gasperi was a politician and prime minister of Italy (1945–53) who contributed to the material and moral reconstruction of his nation after World War II. From the age of 24 De Gasperi directed the journal Il Nuovo Trentino, in which he defended Italian culture and the economic interests

Stand Watie was a Cherokee chief who signed the treaty forcing tribal removal of the Cherokees from Georgia and who later served as brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the U.S. Civil War. Watie learned to speak English when, at the age of 12, he was sent to a mission school. He later

Charles de Gaulle was a French soldier, writer, statesman, and architect of France’s Fifth Republic. De Gaulle was the second son of a Roman Catholic, patriotic, and nationalist upper-middle-class family. The family had produced historians and writers, and his father taught philosophy and

Charles De Geer was a Swedish entomologist. A member of a wealthy aristocratic Swedish family that had originated in Brabant (modern Belgium), De Geer himself grew up in Holland but returned to Sweden in 1739. Because of his wealth and heritage (rather than because of any youthful accomplishments),

Gerhard, Baron De Geer was a Swedish geologist, originator of the varve-counting method used in geochronology. De Geer was appointed to the Swedish Geological Survey in 1878 and received a master’s degree in geology from Uppsala University in 1879. He studied the glaciers of Spitsbergen in a series

Sweden: Parliamentary reform: …the minister of justice, Baron Louis De Geer, completed the reforms. From the beginning of the 19th century, the most important of the liberal demands had been for a reform of the system of representation. It was not until 1865–66 that agreement was reached to replace the old Riksdag—with its…

Giovanni Boccaccio: Petrarch and Boccaccio’s mature years: His encyclopedic De genealogia deorum gentilium (“On the Genealogy of the Gods of the Gentiles”), medieval in structure but humanist in spirit, was probably begun in the very year of his meeting with Petrarch but was continuously corrected and revised until his death. His Bucolicum carmen (1351–66),…

Aristotle: Travels: …the Parts of Animals and On the Generation of Animals. Although Aristotle did not claim to have founded the science of zoology, his detailed observations of a wide variety of organisms were quite without precedent. He—or one of his research assistants—must have been gifted with remarkably acute eyesight, since some…

Christianity: Western Catholic Christianity: Later, in the Literal Commentary on Genesis, he introduced a triple classification of visions—corporeal, spiritual (i.e., imaginative), and intellectual—that influenced later mystics for centuries. Although he was influenced by Neoplatonist philosophers such as Plotinus, Augustine did not speak of personal union with God in this life. His teaching,…

Martianus Minneus Felix Capella: …arte dialectica, De arte rhetorica, De geometrica, De arithmetica, De astrologia, and De harmonia. Mercury gives his bride, who is made divine, seven maidens, and each declaims on that one of the seven liberal arts that she represents. The prose style is often dry, but in parts it is influenced…

Michel de Montaigne: Life: He also met Marie de Gournay, an ardent and devoted young admirer of his writings. De Gournay, a writer herself, is mentioned in the Essays as Montaigne’s “covenant daughter” and was to become his literary executrix. After the assassination of Henry III in 1589, Montaigne helped to keep…

history of logic: St. Anselm and Peter Abelard: …discussed semantical questions in his De grammatico and investigated the notions of possibility and necessity in surviving fragments, but these texts did not have much influence. More important was Anselm’s general method of using logical techniques in theology. His example set the tone for much that was to follow.

semi-Pelagianism: …request of Provence bishops wrote De gratia (“Concerning Grace”), in which semi-Pelagianism was given its final form and one more naturalistic than that provided by Cassian.

St. Augustine: Controversial writings: …et de peccato originali (418; On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin) is a more methodical exposition. The hardest positions Augustine takes in favour of predestination in his last years appear in De praedestinatione sanctorum (429; The Predestination of the Blessed) and De dono perseverantiae (429; The Gift…

De Grey River, river in northwestern Western Australia. It rises as the Oakover River in the Robertson Range, 150 miles (240 km) southeast of Marble Bar, and flows north. Midway in its course, it turns northwest to join the Nullagine River and becomes the De Grey. The seasonally intermittent

Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist and scholar whose masterpiece De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625; On the Law of War and Peace) is considered one of the greatest contributions to the development of international law. Also a statesman and diplomat, Grotius has been called the “father of international law.”

Pieter Geyl: A collection of articles, De Groot-Nederlandsche gedachte, appeared in 1925 (a second volume was added in 1930), dealing with the concept of unity in the history of Holland and Flanders and generally sympathetic to the development of the nation-state. His greatest contribution, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse stam, 6 vol.…

Girolamo Aleandro: …work is his unfinished treatise De habendo Concilio, setting forth his views on the Council of Trent, of which he was an ardent supporter. This and other documents of Aleandro in the Vatican Library, relating to his opposition to Luther, were used in Sforza Pallavicino’s Istoria del Concilio Tridentino (1656;…

Samuel, baron von Pufendorf: Career in Sweden: In 1687 he published Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society, which set forth the civil superiority of the state over the church but also defended the church’s power in ecclesiastical matters as well as the freedom of conscience of the individual. His approach…

Martianus Minneus Felix Capella: >De harmonia. Mercury gives his bride, who is made divine, seven maidens, and each declaims on that one of the seven liberal arts that she represents. The prose style is often dry, but in parts it is influenced by the style of the Metamorphoses of…

Hucbald: His treatise De harmonica institutione describes the gamut (the series of recognized musical notes) and the eight modes. He also wrote poems, metrical prayers, and hymns.

Geoffrey de Havilland: …September 1920 he formed the De Havilland Aircraft Company. The success of the Moth, a light two-seater, made the company financially successful and started the flying club movement in Great Britain. In World War II the company’s most successful product was the twin-engined Mosquito, a high-speed, all-purpose aircraft of plywood…

aerospace industry: World War I: …the two-seat British De Havilland DH-4 bomber and the American-designed Curtiss JN-4 Jennie trainer. By the end of the war 4,500 DH-4s had been built in the United States, 1,213 of which were shipped to Europe. Although American production was too late to matter militarily, by the 1918 Armistice American…