| | - Riemenschneider, Tilman
- master sculptor whose wood portrait carvings and statues made him one of the major artists of the late Gothic period in Germany; he was known as the leader of the Lower Franconia school. [2 Related Articles]
- Riesener, Jean-Henri
- the best-known cabinetmaker in France during the reign of Louis XVI. [1 Related Articles]
- Riesling
- (from the article "Alsace") Alsace has a rich, highly intensive agriculture characterized by small farms. This is particularly true of the vineyards that dominate the foothills of the Vosges. Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Sylvaner, Auxerrois, and Pinot Blanc are among the notable white wines produced. Colmar is the principal centre of the wine-growing region, whose vineyards...
- Riesman, David
- American sociologist and author most noted for The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (with Reuel Denney and Nathan Glazer, 1950), a work dealing primarily with the social character of the urban middle class. "The lonely crowd" became a catchphrase denoting modern urban society ... [1 Related Articles]
- Riesz, Frigyes
- Hungarian mathematician and pioneer of functional analysis, which has found important applications to mathematical physics.
- Riesz-Fischer theorem
- (from the article "Riesz, Frigyes") Many of Riesz's fundamental findings in functional analysis were incorporated with those of Stefan Banach of Poland. The Riesz-Fischer theorem of 1907, concerning the equivalence of the Hilbert space of sequences of convergent sums of squares with the space of functions of summable squares, formed the mathematical basis for demonstrating ...
- Rieti
- city, Lazio (Latium) regione, central Italy, on the Velino River in the Abruzzi Apennines, just southeast of Terni. The ancient town was first settled by the Sabines and then became the Roman Reate. It belonged to the Lombard duchy of Spoleto in the early European Middle Ages and later passed ...
- Rietveld, Gerrit Thomas
- Dutch architect and furniture designer notable for his application of the tenets of the de Stijl movement. He was an apprentice in his father's cabinetmaking business from 1899 to 1906 and later studied architecture in Utrecht. [2 Related Articles]
- Rievaulx
- ruined Cistercian abbey, Ryedale district, administrative county of North Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, England. It lies in the seclusion of a deep valley to which it has given its name, in the North York Moors National Park. The monastery was the mother church of the Christianizing mission of St. ...
- Rieveschl, George
- American chemical engineer invented the chemical compound used in the antihistamine Benadryl. Though not a medical doctor, Rieveschl brought relief to millions of allergy sufferers through his synthesis of beta-dimethylaminoethylbenzhydryl ether hydrochloride, the active ingredient in Benadryl. After earning (1940) a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio, ...
- Rif
- any of the Berber peoples occupying a part of northeastern Morocco known as the Rif, an Arabic word meaning "edge of cultivated area." The Rif are divided into 19 groups or social units: 5 in the west along the Mediterranean coast, 7 in the centre, 5 in the east, and ... [5 Related Articles]
- Rif
- mountain range of northern Morocco, extending from Tangier to the Moulouya River valley near the Moroccan-Algerian frontier. For the greater part of its 180-mile (290-km) length, the range hugs the Mediterranean Sea, leaving only a few narrow coastal valleys suitable for agriculture or urban settlement. The higher peaks, including Mount ... [2 Related Articles]
- Rif language
- (from the article "Rif") ...coast, 7 in the centre, 5 in the east, and 2 in the southeastern desert area. One central group is Arabic-speaking, as are sections of the five western groups. The others generally speak Rif, a regionally variable Berber language, but many also speak Spanish or Arabic. The Rif are Muslims.
- Rif War
- (1919-26), war fought between the Spanish and the Moroccan Rif and Jibala tribes. [2 Related Articles]
- Rif, Republic of the
- (from the article "Abd el-Krim") leader of a resistance movement against Spanish and French rule in North Africa and founder of the short-lived Republic of the Rif (1921-26). A skilled tactician and a capable organizer, he led a liberation movement that made him the hero of the Maghrib (northwest Africa). A precursor of the anticolonial ...
- Rifa', Ar-
- municipality in the state and emirate of Bahrain, on north-central Bahrain island, in the Persian Gulf. It is on the north rim of the island's central depression, site of the country's chief oil fields. The municipality is an agglomeration of four originally distinct population clusters, now united in administration and ...
- Rifa'iyah
- fraternity of Muslim mystics (Sufis), known in the West as howling dervishes, found primarily in Egypt and Syria and in Turkey until outlawed in 1925. An offshoot of the Qadiriyah established in Basra, Iraq, by Ahmad ar-Rifa'i (d. 1187), the order preserved his stress on poverty, abstinence, and self-mortification. It ... [1 Related Articles]
- rifampin
- (from the article "drug") ...for converting the intermediate to folic acid. This reaction is reversible by removing the chemical, which results in the inhibition but not the death of the microorganisms. One antibiotic, rifampin, interferes with ribonucleic acid (RNA) synthesis in bacteria by binding to a subunit on the bacterial enzyme responsible for duplication ...
- Rifbjerg, Klaus
- Danish poet, novelist, playwright, and editor. [3 Related Articles]
- Riffaterre, Michael
- American literary critic, whose textual analyses emphasize the responses of the reader and not the biography and politics of the author. [1 Related Articles]
- Rifkind, Malcolm Leslie
- When he reshuffled the United Kingdom's Cabinet in July 1995, Prime Minister John Major promoted Malcolm Rifkind to become his foreign secretary. Rifkind had long supported greater cooperation with the rest of Europe, but he had to devise policies that would not cause too much offense to those fellow Conservatives ...
- Rifkind, Simon Hirsch
- Russian-born U.S. lawyer and judge (b. June 5, 1901, Meretz, Russia--d. Nov. 14, 1995, New York, N.Y.), in a career of more than 60 years, represented clients ranging from the Municipal Assistance Corp., which rescued New York City from bankruptcy in the mid-1970s, to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in two well-publicized ...
- rifle
- firearm with a rifled bore-i.e., having shallow spiral grooves cut inside the barrel to impart a spin to the projectile. The name, most often applied to a weapon fired from the shoulder, may also denote a rifled cannon; but though field guns, howitzers, pistols, and machine guns have rifled barrels, ... [12 Related Articles]
- rifle company
- (from the article "company") ...to be carried by foot soldiers. Not until World War II, when lighter machine guns, mortars, and antitank weapons had been developed, did crew-served weapons become a normal part of the infantry rifle company. In the U.S. Army the rifle company in 1945 had a strength of 6 officers and ...
- rifle grenade
- (from the article "grenade") Grenades can be launched from the muzzle of a rifle either by the force of a cartridge or by the expanding gases of a blank cartridge. Such grenades usually have long, streamlined bodies, in contrast to the round shapes of hand grenades. There are also small-arm grenade rounds, shaped like ...
- riflebird
- (from the article "riflebird") any of certain bird-of-paradise (q.v.) species.PHOTOGRAPHMagnificent riflebird (Ptiloris magnificus).Brian J. Coates/Bruce Coleman Ltd.
- rifleman
- (from the article "rifleman") a New Zealand wren of the family Xenicidae (q.v.).for more general content related to this topicXenicidae
- Riflemen, Union of
- (from the article "Pilsudski, Jozef") ...the Russian Empire's structural weakness and foreseeing a European war, Pilsudski concluded that it was imperative to organize the nucleus of a future Polish army. In 1908 he formed a secret Union of Military Action-financed with a sum of money stolen from a Russian mail train by an armed band ...
- rifling
- (from the article "small arm") As killing machines, smoothbore infantry muskets were relatively inefficient. Their heavy, round lead balls delivered bone-crushing and tissue-destroying blows when they hit a human body, but beyond 75 yards even trained infantrymen found it difficult to hit an individual adversary. Volley fire against massed troops delivered effective projectiles out to ...
- rift valley
- any elongated trough formed by the subsidence of a segment of the Earth's crust between dip-slip, or normal, faults. Such a fault is a fracture in the terrestrial surface in which the rock material on the upper side of the fault plane has been displaced downward relative to the rock ... [7 Related Articles]
- Rift Valley fever
- viral infection of animals that is transmissible to humans and causes a febrile illness of short duration. Headache, intolerance to light (photophobia), muscle pain, loss of appetite, and prostration are common symptoms. The virus is borne by mosquitoes and spread by the insect's bite, although humans also can contract the ... [1 Related Articles]
- rift volcano
- (from the article "volcano") Rift volcanoes form when magma rises into the gap between diverging plates. They thus occur at or near actual plate boundaries. Measurements in Iceland suggest that the separation of plates is a continuous process but that the fracturing is intermittent, analogous to a rubber band that is slowly stretched until ...
- rifting
- (from the article "plate tectonics") Upwelling of magma causes the overlying lithosphere to uplift and stretch. If the diverging plates are capped by continental crust, fractures develop that are invaded by the ascending magma, prying the continents farther apart. Settling of the continental blocks creates a rift valley, such as the present-day East African Rift ...
- Riga
- city and capital of Latvia. It occupies both banks of the Western Dvina River 9 miles (15 km) above its mouth on the Gulf of Riga. [5 Related Articles]
- Riga, Gulf of
- large gulf of the Baltic Sea, bounded by the northern coast of Latvia and the western coast of Estonia, about 7,000 sq mi (18,000 sq km) in area. The gulf is separated from the Baltic Sea proper by Estonia's Muhu archipelago, but navigation is possible through several straits. The gulf, ... [1 Related Articles]
- Riga, Treaty of
- (from the article "Belarus") ...in April of that year, troops of newly reconstituted Poland advanced eastward to the Byarezina River only to be thrown back again in 1920. Hostilities between Russia and Poland ended with the Treaty of Riga (signed March 18, 1921), which divided the area of Belarus between Poland and Soviet Russia ...
- Rigas Velestinlis
- (from the article "Greece, history of") Toward the end of the 18th century Rigas Velestinlis (also known as Rigas Pheraios), a Hellenized Vlach from Thessaly, began not only to dream of, but actively to plan for, an armed revolt against the Turks. Rigas, who had served a number of Phanariote hospodars in the Danubian principalities, spent ...
- Rigas, John
- (from the article "Law, Crime, and Law Enforcement") ...in 2002, was found guilty in March on all nine counts, involving conspiracy, securities fraud, and filing false reports with regulators. Ebbers was sentenced in July to 25 years in prison. In June John Rigas, the founder and former head of Adelphia Communications, received a 15-year prison sentence, and his ...
- rigatoni
- (from the article "pasta") ...of 12-inch (12.7-millimetre) diameter, such variations as the small elbow-shaped pieces called dita lisci, and the large, fluted, elbow-shaped pieces called rigatoni. Ribbon types include the wide lasagna and the narrow linguini. Farfels are ground, granulated, or shredded. The wide variety of special shapes includes farfalloni ("large...
- Rigaud, Andre
- (from the article "Petion, Alexandre Sabes") ...and a mulatto, Petion served in the French colonial army before the French Revolution and then joined the revolutionary troops of Toussaint Louverture and, later, those of the mulatto general Andre Rigaud. Fleeing to France after Toussaint defeated Rigaud, who had set up a mulatto state in the southern provinces, ...
- Rigaud, Hyacinthe
- one of the most prolific and successful French portrait painters of the Baroque period. He was trained at Montpellier before moving to Lyon and finally to Paris in 1681, where he devoted himself to portraiture. By 1688, when he received his first royal commission, he already had a considerable reputation ...
- rigaudon
- sprightly 17th-century French folk dance for couples. Its hopping steps were adopted by the skillful dancers of the French and English courts, where it remained fashionable through the 18th century. Conjecture assigns its origins to Provencal sailors and its name to a Marseille dance master, Rigaud, who reputedly introduced the ...
- Rigault de Genouilly, Charles
- admiral who initiated the French invasion of Vietnam in 1858 and the subsequent conquest of Cochinchina, now southern Vietnam. [1 Related Articles]
- Rigdon, Sidney
- American churchman, an early convert to Mormonism (1830) and first counselor to its founder, Joseph Smith. [1 Related Articles]
- Rigel
- one of the brightest stars in the sky, intrinsically as well as in appearance. A blue-white supergiant in the constellation Orion, Rigel is about 770 light-years from the Sun and is about 37,000 times as luminous. A companion star, also bluish white, is of the sixth magnitude. The name Rigel ... [3 Related Articles]
- Rigestan
- (Persian: "country of sand"), arid plateau region in southwestern Afghanistan. Rigestan is, for the greater part, a sandy desert with ridges and small, isolated hills of red sand. The sand ridges and dunes, reaching heights of between 50 and 100 feet (15 and 30 m), alternate with windblown sand-covered planes, ... [1 Related Articles]
- Rigestan Square
- (from the article "Samarkand") ...wife, and Timur's tomb itself, the Gur-e Amir mausoleum, built about 1405. To the second half of the 15th century belongs the Ak Saray tomb with a superb fresco of the interior. The Rigestan Square, an impressive public square in the old city, is fronted by several madrasahs (Islamic schools): ...
- Rigg, Dame Diana
- classically trained English stage actress who gained worldwide fame during the 1960s in the television series The Avengers.
- Riggin, Aileen
- American swimmer and diver, who won three Olympic medals and was the first competitor to win a medal in both a swimming and a diving event at the same Olympics. [2 Related Articles]
- rigging
- the sails, masts, booms, yards, stays, and lines of a sailing vessel, or its cordage only.
- Riggs Bank
- (from the article "Chile") The big story in Chile in 2004 revolved around former president Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. In July a U.S. Senate committee reported that between 1994 and 2002 the Washington, D.C.-based Riggs Bank had helped Pinochet hide millions of dollars in at least six secret bank accounts and apparently aided him ...
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