Born: 1724. Nottinghamshire
[Died] 21 April 1793. Thornhill. British geologist and astronomer. He is considered one of the fathers of seismology. In 1760, he was elected to the Royal Society of London, and in 1762, he became Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge University. In 1767, he became the rector of Thornhill. In 1750, he published a major treatise on artificial magnets. Before the discovery of Coulomb's law by the French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Mitchell may have discovered the principle of the torsion balance, and he intended to use this to measure the average density of the Earth. He died in the middle of his research, but the British physicist Henry Cavendish, who took over his experimental equipment, measured the value of the gravitational constant. In 1760, he published the results of his research on the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. In this paper, he showed that the epicenter of the Lisbon earthquake was beneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and proposed the erroneous theory that earthquakes were caused by high-pressure steam produced when seawater came into contact with subsurface heat. In astronomy, he was the first to provide a realistic estimate of the distance from Earth to the stars. He also proposed the idea that a binary star system is two or more stars that are physically close together and orbit each other, a theory that was later proven by the British astronomer John F.W. Herschel. Mitchell
Mitchell, William Born: December 29, 1879, Nice
[Died] February 19, 1936, New York. American army officer. When the Spanish-American War broke out in 1898, he dropped out of college and volunteered for the army, serving in Cuba, the Philippines, Alaska, and elsewhere. He received flight training from 1915 to 1916, and in 1918, during World War I, he commanded the combined American and French air force, the largest in history at the time, consisting of about 1,500 aircraft. He was sympathetic to the strategic bombing advocated by British General H. Trenchard, and served as deputy commander of the Army Air Forces from 1919 to 1925. However, he strongly advocated the independence of the air force and harshly criticized the opposing military and naval leaders, so he was suspended from military status and duties for five years at a military trial in December 1925, and retired from the army in February 1926. After his death, the policies that emphasized the importance of aircraft, such as strategic bombing and airborne operations, that he had advocated during his lifetime, were realized. However, there was a lack of awareness of the overwhelming value of aircraft carriers in maritime operations. In 1946 Congress voted to award him the Medal of Honor, and in 1948 the newly created Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force presented it to his son. Mitchell
Mitchell, Wesley Clair Born: August 5, 1874, Rushville, Illinois
[Died] October 29, 1948. New York American economist. Educated at the University of Chicago, he lectured at his alma mater, became a professor at the University of California in 1902, and became a professor at Columbia University in 1913 (professor emeritus in 1944). During this time he was director of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) (20-45) and chairman of President Hoover's Social Condition Survey Committee (29-33). He was particularly active in the study of business fluctuations at the NBER, and achieved great results in the statistical analysis of huge time series, the verification of hypotheses derived from the analysis, and the accumulation of historical materials. He also made great contributions to the management and guidance of the institute. His main works are Business Cycles: The Problems and its Setting (27), Measuring Business Cycles (47), and Business Cycles: What happens during Business Cycles (51), co-authored with A.F. Barnes. Mitchell
Mitchell, Margaret Born: November 8, 1900, Atlanta, Georgia
[Died] August 16, 1949. Atlanta, Georgia. American female author. Known for her single novel, Gone With the Wind (1936, Pulitzer Prize). Her father was a lawyer who served as president of the Atlanta Historical Society, and the Civil War was a favorite topic in her family. She enrolled at Smith College hoping to become a doctor, but returned home after one year due to her mother's death. She began working for the Atlanta Journal in 1922, writing articles under the pen name Peggy Mitchell. She married in 1925. The following year, she left the paper due to foot problems, and for the next ten years, she worked on a theme that had occupied her mind since childhood, and published this novel. Set against the backdrop of the Civil War, this epic romance featuring the feisty woman Scarlett O'Hara and the swindler Rhett Butler was a huge hit when it was released, and won many readers both in Japan and abroad. She died unexpectedly in a car accident. Mitchell
Mitchell, Arthur Born: March 27, 1934, New York, New York
[Died] September 19, 2018. New York, New York. Dancer and choreographer. While attending the New York High School of Performing Arts, he performed in Broadway musicals and with the Donald McKayle and John Butler companies. In 1956, he joined the New York City Ballet (NYCB), America's leading ballet company, as the only black dancer, and in 1962 was promoted to the highest rank of principal. At NYCB, he performed in works choreographed by George Balanchine, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962) and Agon (1967). In 1969, he founded the Dance Theatre of Harlem, an all-black ballet company, with ballet teacher Karel Shook, and was active as artistic director, choreographer, and instructor at the attached dance school. Mitchell
Mitchell, Thomas Born July 11, 1892 in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
[Died] December 17, 1962. Beverly Hills, California. American actor. He made his New York debut in 1913 in The Tempest. He later starred in A West Country Favorite (1921), A Visitor in the Night (1947), and Death of a Salesman (1950). After 1936, he appeared in many films, including Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In the same year, Gone with the Wind was made into a film, in which he played Scarlett O'Hara's father. He also worked with Floyd Dell to adapt and stage his novel The Unmarried Father. Mitchell
Mitchell, S(ilas) Weir Born: February 15, 1829, Philadelphia
Died January 4, 1914, Philadelphia. American physician and novelist. He studied medicine in Paris, and made outstanding achievements in toxicology and neurology. He also turned his hand to writing, and wrote many historical novels centered on psychological analysis, making use of his expertise. His representative work is Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker (1897), which depicts the Quakers during the American War of Independence. His other works include In War Time (85), set during the American Civil War, Roland Blake (86), and Constance Trescott (1905), a story of a woman's revenge. Mitchell
Mitchell, Peter Dennis Born: September 29, 1920, Mitchum
[Died] April 10, 1992. Bodmin, Cornwall. British biochemist. After graduating from Cambridge University (1943), he continued research at his alma mater as an assistant professor, earning his doctorate in 1950. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh (55), he became director of the Glynn Institute (64). He had been researching energy conversion in living organisms since his student days, and in 1961 published the "chemiosmotic theory," which suggested that an enzyme present inside biological membranes causes the conversion of adenosine diphosphate to adenosine triphosphate. He continued to work on perfecting the theory, conducting repeated experiments. For this achievement, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1978. Mitchell
Mitchell, Sir Thomas Livingstone [Born] 1792
[Died] 1855
Scottish explorer. He gained experience in surveying during the Napoleonic Wars, and in 1827 he supervised surveying in the colony of New South Wales in Australia, publishing a survey map of the colony in 1835. In 1836 he traveled south along the Darling River, discovered by C. Sturt, to the Murray River, then to Portland, and from there he crossed the colony of Victoria and returned to Sydney. This expedition revealed the extent of the area that could be developed and its topography. Mitchell
Mitchell A city in southeastern South Dakota, United States, in the James River Valley. It was founded in 1879 as a railroad town and was named after the president of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad Company. Its economy changed from corn production, livestock, and dairy farming to a center for light manufacturing and pheasant-season sports. It is home to Dakota Wesley University (founded 1885). Population 13,798 (1990). Mitchell
Mitchell, Donald Grant [Born] 1822
[Died] 1908
Ik Marvel was an American essayist best known for his Reveries of a Bachelor (1850), a collection of essays in which a bachelor writes sentimentally about marriage, love, friendship, and so on. Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia About Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia Information |
