Articles with PortugalA identifiers

Pierre_Mendes-France

Pierre Isaac Isidore Mendès France (French: [pjɛʁ mɑ̃dɛs fʁɑ̃s]; 11 January 1907 – 18 October 1982) was a French politician who served as prime minister of France for eight months from 1954 to 1955. As a member of the Radical Party, he headed a government supported by a coalition of Gaullists (RPF), moderate socialists (UDSR), Christian democrats (MRP) and liberal-conservatives (CNIP). His main priority was ending the Indochina War, which had already cost 92,000 lives, with 114,000 wounded and 28,000 captured on the French side. Public opinion polls showed that, in February 1954, only 7% of the French people wanted to continue the fight to regain Indochina out of the hands of the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh movement. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, Mendès France negotiated a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the seventeenth parallel, and allowed him to pull out all French forces. He is considered one of the most prominent statesmen of the French Fourth Republic.

A.J._Cronin

Archibald Joseph Cronin (19 July 1896 – 6 January 1981), known as A. J. Cronin, was a Scottish physician and novelist. His best-known novel is The Citadel (1937), about a Scottish doctor who serves in a Welsh mining village before achieving success in London, where he becomes disillusioned about the venality and incompetence of some doctors. Cronin knew both areas, as a medical inspector of mines and as a doctor in Harley Street. The book exposed unfairness and malpractice in British medicine and helped to inspire the National Health Service. The Stars Look Down, set in the North East of England, is another of his best-selling novels inspired by his work among miners. Both novels have been filmed, as have Hatter's Castle, The Keys of the Kingdom and The Green Years. His 1935 novella Country Doctor inspired a long-running BBC radio and TV series, Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962–1971), set in the 1920s. There was a follow-up series in 1993–1996.

Ernst_Junger

Ernst Jünger (German pronunciation: [ɛʁnst ˈjʏŋɐ]; 29 March 1895 – 17 February 1998) was a German author, highly decorated soldier, philosopher, and entomologist who became publicly known for his World War I memoir Storm of Steel.
The son of a successful businessman and chemist, Jünger rebelled against an affluent upbringing and sought adventure in the Wandervogel German youth movement, before running away to briefly serve in the French Foreign Legion, which was an illegal act in Germany. However, he escaped prosecution due to his father's efforts and was able to enlist in the German Army on the outbreak of World War I in 1914. During an ill-fated offensive in 1918 Jünger was badly wounded and was awarded the Pour le Mérite, a rare decoration for one of his rank.
He wrote against liberal values, democracy, and the Weimar Republic, but rejected the advances of the Nazis who were rising to power. During World War II Jünger served as an army captain in occupied Paris, but by 1943 he had turned decisively against Nazi totalitarianism, a change manifested in his work "Der Friede" (The Peace). Jünger was dismissed from the army in 1944 after he was indirectly implicated with fellow officers who had plotted to kill Hitler. A few months later, his son died in combat in Italy after having been sentenced to a penal battalion for political reasons.After the war, Jünger was treated with some suspicion as a possible fellow traveller of the Nazis. By the later stages of the Cold War, his unorthodox writings about the impact of materialism in modern society were widely seen as conservative rather than radical nationalist, and his philosophical works came to be highly regarded in mainstream German circles. Jünger ended life as an honoured literary figure, although critics continued to charge him with the glorification of war as a transcendental experience in some of his early works. He was an ardent militarist and one of the most complex and contradictory figures in 20th-century German literature.

Wilhelm_Furtwangler

Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler (UK: FOORT-veng-glər, US: -⁠lər, German: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈfʊɐ̯tvɛŋlɐ]; 25 January 1886 – 30 November 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a major influence for many later conductors, and his name is often mentioned when discussing their interpretative styles.Furtwängler was principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic between 1922 and 1945, and from 1952 until 1954. He was also principal conductor of the Gewandhaus Orchestra (1922–26), and was a guest conductor of other major orchestras including the Vienna Philharmonic.
Although not an adherent of Nazism, he was the leading conductor to remain in Germany during the Nazi regime. Despite his open opposition to antisemitism and the ubiquity of Nazi symbolism, the regime did not seek to suppress him, at Joseph Goebbels' insistence, for propaganda reasons. This situation caused lasting controversy, and the extent to which his presence lent prestige to Nazi Germany is still debated.

Sidonie-Gabrielle_Colette

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (French: [sidɔni ɡabʁijɛl kɔlɛt]; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her 1944 novella Gigi, which was the basis for the 1958 film and the 1973 stage production of the same name. Her short story collection The Tendrils of the Vine is also famous in France.

Swami_Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda (; Bengali: [ʃami bibekanɔndo] ; IAST: Svāmī Vivekānanda ; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta (Bengali: [nɔrendronatʰ dɔto]), was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the introduction of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world, and the father of modern Indian nationalism who is credited with raising interfaith awareness and bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion.Born into an aristocratic Bengali Kayastha family in Calcutta, Vivekananda was inclined from a young age towards religion and spirituality. He later found his guru Ramakrishna and became a monk. After the death of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda extensively toured the Indian subcontinent acquiring first-hand knowledge of the living conditions of Indian people in then British India. Moved by their plight, he resolved to help his countrymen and found a way to travel to the United States, where he became a popular figure after the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago at which he delivered his famous speech beginning with the words: "Sisters and brothers of America ..." while introducing Hinduism to Americans. He was so impactful at the Parliament that an American newspaper described him as "an orator by divine right and undoubtedly the greatest figure at the Parliament".After great success at the Parliament, in the subsequent years, Vivekananda delivered hundreds of lectures across the United States, England and Europe, disseminating the core tenets of Hindu philosophy, and founded the Vedanta Society of New York and the Vedanta Society of San Francisco (now Vedanta Society of Northern California), both of which became the foundations for Vedanta Societies in the West. In India, Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Math, which provides spiritual training for monastics and householder devotees, and the Ramakrishna Mission, which provides charity, social work and education.Vivekananda was one of the most influential philosophers and social reformers in his contemporary India, and the most successful missionaries of Vedanta to the Western world. He was also a major force in contemporary Hindu reform movements and contributed to the concept of nationalism in colonial India. He is now widely regarded as one of the most influential people of modern India and a patriotic saint. His birthday in India is celebrated as National Youth Day.

Henri_Petain

Henri Philippe Bénoni Omer Joseph Pétain (24 April 1856 – 23 July 1951), commonly known as Philippe Pétain (, French: [filip petɛ̃]) or Marshal Pétain (French: Maréchal Pétain), was a general who commanded the French Army in World War I and became the head of the collaborationist regime of Vichy France, from 1940 to 1944, during World War II.
Pétain was admitted to the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in 1873 and pursued a career in the military, achieving the rank of colonel by the outbreak of World War I. He led the French Army to victory at the nine-month-long Battle of Verdun, for which he was called "the Lion of Verdun" (French: le lion de Verdun). After the failed Nivelle Offensive and subsequent mutinies, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief and succeeded in restoring control. Pétain remained in command for the rest of the war and emerged as a national hero. During the interwar period he was head of the peacetime French Army, commanded joint Franco-Spanish operations during the Rif War and served twice as a government minister. During this time he was known as le vieux Maréchal ("the Old Marshal").
On 17 June 1940, with the imminent Fall of France and the government desire for an armistice, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud resigned, recommending to President Albert Lebrun that he appoint Pétain in his place, which he did that day, while the government was at Bordeaux. The government then resolved to sign armistice agreements with Germany and Italy. The entire government subsequently moved briefly to Clermont-Ferrand, then to the town of Vichy in central France. It voted to transform the French Third Republic into the French State, better known as Vichy France, an authoritarian puppet regime that was allowed to govern the southeast of France and which collaborated with the Axis powers. After Germany and Italy occupied all of France in November 1942, Pétain's government worked closely with the Nazi German military administration.
After the war, Pétain was tried and convicted for treason. He was originally sentenced to death, but due to his age and World War I service his sentence was commuted to life in prison. His journey from military obscurity, to hero of France during World War I, to collaborationist ruler during World War II, led his successor Charles de Gaulle to declare that Pétain's life was "successively banal, then glorious, then deplorable, but never mediocre".
Pétain, who was 84 years old when he became Prime Minister and later Chief of State, remains both the oldest person to become the head of government and the oldest person to become the head of state of France.

Hendrik_Antoon_Lorentz

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (; 18 July 1853 – 4 February 1928) was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect. He derived the Lorentz transformation of the special theory of relativity, as well as the Lorentz force, which describes the combined electric and magnetic forces acting on a charged particle in an electromagnetic field. Lorentz was also responsible for the Lorentz oscillator model, a classical model used to describe the anomalous dispersion observed in dielectric materials when the driving frequency of the electric field was near the resonant frequency, resulting in abnormal refractive indices.
According to the biography published by the Nobel Foundation, "It may well be said that Lorentz was regarded by all theoretical physicists as the world's leading spirit, who completed what was left unfinished by his predecessors and prepared the ground for the fruitful reception of the new ideas based on the quantum theory." He received many other honours and distinctions, including a term as chairman of the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, the forerunner of UNESCO, between 1925 and 1928.

Christian_Felix_Klein

Felix Christian Klein (German: [klaɪn]; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and mathematics educator, known for his work in group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and the associations between geometry and group theory. His 1872 Erlangen program classified geometries by their basic symmetry groups and was an influential synthesis of much of the mathematics of the time.
During his tenure at the University of Göttingen, Klein was able to turn it into a center for mathematical and scientific research through the establishment of new lectures, professorships, and institutes. His seminars covered most areas of mathematics then known as well as their applications. Klein also devoted considerable time to mathematical instruction, and promoted mathematics education reform at all grade levels in Germany and abroad. He became the first president of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction in 1908 at the Fourth International Congress of Mathematicians in Rome.