• Peresvetov, Ivan Semenovich (Russian social critic)

    Ivan Semenovich Peresvetov was an early Russian progressive social critic. Peresvetov was born to a family of the lower nobility in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and served in the Polish Lithuanian army during the 1520s and 1530s. He arrived in Russia in 1538 or 1539. In 1549 he presented his Two

  • peret (Egyptian season)

    Egypt: Agriculture and fishing: …the river: akhet, the “inundation”; peret, the season when the land emerged from the flood; and shomu, the time when water was short. When the Nile behaved as expected, which most commonly was the case, life went on as normal; when the flood failed or was excessive, disaster followed.

  • Perets, Yitskhak Leybush (Polish-Jewish writer)

    I.L. Peretz was a prolific writer of poems, short stories, drama, humorous sketches, and satire who was instrumental in raising the standard of Yiddish literature to a high level. Peretz began writing in Hebrew but soon turned to Yiddish. For his tales, he drew material from the lives of

  • Peretti, Felice (pope)

    Sixtus V was the pope from 1585 to 1590, who reformed the Roman Curia. He entered the Franciscan order in 1533 and was ordained at Siena in 1547. He served twice (1557–60) as inquisitor general in Venice, his severity there causing his recall. Pope Pius V made him vicar general of the Franciscans

  • Peretti, Jonah (American entrepreneur)

    HuffPost: …of Technology Media Lab graduate Jonah Peretti. Headquarters are in New York City.

  • Peretz, I.L. (Polish-Jewish writer)

    I.L. Peretz was a prolific writer of poems, short stories, drama, humorous sketches, and satire who was instrumental in raising the standard of Yiddish literature to a high level. Peretz began writing in Hebrew but soon turned to Yiddish. For his tales, he drew material from the lives of

  • Peretz, Isaac Löb (Polish-Jewish writer)

    I.L. Peretz was a prolific writer of poems, short stories, drama, humorous sketches, and satire who was instrumental in raising the standard of Yiddish literature to a high level. Peretz began writing in Hebrew but soon turned to Yiddish. For his tales, he drew material from the lives of

  • Peretz, Isaac Loeb (Polish-Jewish writer)

    I.L. Peretz was a prolific writer of poems, short stories, drama, humorous sketches, and satire who was instrumental in raising the standard of Yiddish literature to a high level. Peretz began writing in Hebrew but soon turned to Yiddish. For his tales, he drew material from the lives of

  • Peretz, Martin (American educator and financier)

    Jim Cramer: …New Republic editor and owner Martin Peretz—gave him $500,000 to invest. Cramer’s success with Peretz’s account led to a job with investment bank Goldman Sachs in 1984, shortly after he had earned a law degree from Harvard. Cramer left Goldman in 1987 to open a hedge fund, Cramer Levy Partners.

  • Pereval (Russian literature)

    Pereval, group of post-Revolutionary Russian writers opposed to the suppression of nonconformist literature and to the concept of enforced writing for the proletariat, ideas that were championed by the Octobrists. The group was led by the critic Aleksandr

  • Perey, Marguerite (French scientist)

    francium: French chemist Marguerite Perey discovered francium (1939) while studying actinium-227, which decays by negative beta decay (electron emission) to an isotope of thorium (thorium-227) and by alpha emission (about 1 percent) into an isotope of francium (francium-223) that was formerly called actinium K (AcK) and is a…

  • Pereyaslav (Ukraine)

    Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy, city, north-central Ukraine. Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy has existed since the 10th century, when it was known as Pereyaslavl. It was a border stronghold of the Kievan Rus state but was overrun by Tatars in 1239. The town began to recover in the 16th century and emerged as a

  • Pereyaslav Agreement (Russia [1654])

    Pereyaslav Agreement, (Jan. 18 [Jan. 8, Old Style], 1654), act undertaken by the rada (council) of the Cossack army in Ukraine to submit Ukraine to Russian rule, and the acceptance of this act by emissaries of the Russian tsar Alexis; the agreement precipitated a war between Poland and Russia

  • Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky (Ukraine)

    Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy, city, north-central Ukraine. Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy has existed since the 10th century, when it was known as Pereyaslavl. It was a border stronghold of the Kievan Rus state but was overrun by Tatars in 1239. The town began to recover in the 16th century and emerged as a

  • Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy (Ukraine)

    Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy, city, north-central Ukraine. Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy has existed since the 10th century, when it was known as Pereyaslavl. It was a border stronghold of the Kievan Rus state but was overrun by Tatars in 1239. The town began to recover in the 16th century and emerged as a

  • Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky (Russia)

    Ryazan, city and administrative centre of Ryazan oblast (region), western Russia. It lies along the Oka River on the site of the ancient town of Pereyaslavl-Ryazansky, about 120 miles (193 km) southeast of Moscow. The original Ryazan, first recorded in 1095, lay downstream at the Pronya confluence.

  • Pereyns, Simón (Flemish-born painter)

    Simón Pereyns was a Flemish-born painter, one of the first European painters to produce significant work in New Spain (Mexico). Simón Pereyns learned to paint in the Flemish Mannerist style in his native Antwerp. In 1558 he left Antwerp for Portugal and spent nine months in Lisbon working in the

  • Pérez Balladares, Ernesto (president of Panama)

    Panama: Transitions to democracy and sovereignty: Led by Ernesto Pérez Balladares, a former cabinet member, the PRD distanced itself from Noriega, and Pérez Balladares won by a plurality. In the assembly the Christian Democrats, who had been the largest bloc, were reduced to a single seat.

  • Pérez de Ayala, Ramón (Spanish author)

    Ramón Pérez de Ayala was a Spanish novelist, poet, and critic who excelled in philosophical satire and the novel of ideas. Pérez de Ayala studied law at Oviedo University and philosophy and literature at the University of Madrid. During World War I he covered France, Italy, England, South America,

  • Pérez de Cuéllar, Javier (prime minister of Peru and secretary-general of the United Nations)

    Javier Pérez de Cuéllar was a Peruvian diplomat, who served as the fifth secretary-general of the United Nations (1982–91) and as prime minister of Peru (2000–01). After attending the Catholic University in Lima, Pérez de Cuéllar joined the foreign ministry in 1940 and the diplomatic service in

  • Pérez de Guzmán, Alonso (Spanish admiral)

    Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, duke de Medina-Sidonia was the duke de Medina-Sidonia and the commander in chief of the Spanish Armada of 1588. A member of the noble and illustrious house of Guzmán, Medina-Sidonia became the seventh bearer of the ducal title in 1555 on the death of his father; he became

  • Pérez de Guzmán, Fernán (Spanish author)

    Fernán Pérez de Guzmán was a Spanish poet, moralist, and historian, author of the first important work of history and historiography in Spanish. His historical portraits of his contemporaries earned him the title of the “Spanish Plutarch.” A member of a distinguished family, Pérez de Guzmán devoted

  • Pérez de Hita, Ginés (Spanish author)

    Ginés Pérez de Hita was a Spanish writer, author of Historia de los vandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrages (1595–1619; “History of the Zegríes and Abencerrages Factions”), usually referred to as Guerras civiles de Granada (“The Civil Wars of Granada”). The book is considered the first Spanish

  • Pérez de Montalván, Juan (Spanish biographer)

    Lope de Vega: Works of Lope de Vega: ” Juan Pérez de Montalván, his first biographer, in his Fama póstuma (1636), attributed to Vega a total of 1,800 plays, as well as more than 400 autos sacramentales (short allegorical plays on sacramental subjects). The dramatist’s own first figure of 230 plays in 1603 rises…

  • Perez de Smith cases (Argentine history)

    Emilio Fermin Mignone: …class-action suits known as the Perez de Smith cases, Mignone persuaded the Argentine Supreme Court to rule that the government was required to admit the fact of the disappearances and to account for the fate of the disappeared persons named in the suits. Mignone himself directed the centre’s public-awareness campaigns…

  • Pérez de Zurita, Juan (Spanish explorer)

    Catamarca: …was founded by the explorer Juan Pérez de Zurita (1559) in the Valle de Quinmivil. Following various moves because of hostile Indians, Catamarca was established in 1694 on its present site (a sheltered, fertile valley) by the provincial governor, Bartolomé de Castro.

  • Pérez del Pulgar, Hernán (Spanish chronicler)

    Spain: Castile: From a contemporary chronicler, Hernán Pérez del Pulgar, historians know how they proceeded piecemeal but systematically against the magnates, sometimes using a nobleman’s defiance of the law, sometimes a breach of the peace or of a pledge, to take over or destroy his castles and thus his independent military…

  • Pérez Esquivel, Adolfo (Argentine sculptor and architect)

    Adolfo Pérez Esquivel is an Argentine sculptor and architect, who became a champion of human rights and nonviolent reform in Latin America. His work as secretary-general of Peace and Justice (Paz y Justicia), an ecumenical organization established in 1974 to coordinate human rights activities

  • Perez Family, The (film by Nair [1995])

    Celia Cruz: …novel by Oscar Hijuelos) and The Perez Family (1995). Her autobiography, Celia: My Life (2004; originally published in Spanish), was written with Ana Cristina Reymundo. Her many honours included three Grammy Awards and four Latin Grammys for recordings such as Ritmo en el corazón (1988; with Ray Barretto) and Siempre…

  • Pérez Galdós, Benito (Spanish author)

    Benito Pérez Galdós was a writer who was regarded as the greatest Spanish novelist since Miguel de Cervantes. His enormous output of short novels chronicling the history and society of 19th-century Spain earned him comparison with Honoré de Balzac and Charles Dickens. Born into a middle-class

  • Pérez Jiménez, Marcos (president of Venezuela)

    Marcos Pérez Jiménez was a professional soldier and president (1952–58) of Venezuela whose regime was marked by extravagance, corruption, police oppression, and mounting unemployment. A graduate of the Venezuelan Military Academy, Pérez Jiménez began his political career in 1944, participating in

  • Pérez Joglar, René (Puerto Rican musician)

    Calle 13: René Pérez Joglar (“Residente”; b. February 23, 1978, San Juan, Puerto Rico) was the master of language, while his stepbrother, Eduardo José Cabra Martínez (“Visitante”; b. September 10, 1978, San Juan, Puerto Rico), masterminded the music. The duo was one of the most popular and…

  • Pérez Molina, Otto (president of Guatemala)

    Guatemala: Guatemala in the 21st century: …elected a retired army general, Otto Pérez Molina, of the Patriotic Party, president in November 2011. Having promised to employ an “iron fist” against Guatemala’s drug-trafficking-related crime problems, Pérez Molina brought the army into the struggle. His government also prosecuted some of those accused of genocide during the civil war…

  • Pérez Rigal, Atanasio (Cuban-born baseball player)

    Tony Pérez is a Cuban-born professional baseball player who played in the United States for 23 years. He played with the Cincinnati Reds, Montreal Expos, and Philadelphia Phillies of the National League (NL) and the Boston Red Sox of the American League (AL). Pérez was signed by Cincinnati in 1960

  • Pérez Rodríguez, Carlos Andrés (president of Venezuela)

    Carlos Andrés Pérez was the president of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1993. Pérez began his political life as a member of the liberal political party Democratic Action, led by Rómulo Betancourt. When Betancourt took power as president of the junta that overthrew Pres. Isaías Medina

  • Pérez Rubio, Timoteo (Spanish artist)

    Rosa Chacel: …and her husband, the painter Timoteo Pérez Rubio, moved to Rome, where Chacel taught at the Spanish Academy and wrote her first novel, Estación, ida y vuelta (1930; “Station, Round Trip”), influenced by James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. After returning to Spain in 1927, she…

  • Perez Vega, Reynaldo (Nicaraguan general)

    Nora Astorga: …of Somoza’s National Guard, General Reynaldo Perez Vega, an alleged torturer, to her house. When Perez Vega began to disrobe in her bedroom, three of her accomplices burst out of hiding, supposedly to kidnap, question, and then exchange him for prisoners. However, when he resisted, they killed him. Astorga later…

  • Pérez, Antonio (Spanish courtier)

    Antonio Pérez was a Spanish courtier who was secretary to King Philip II of Spain and later became a fugitive from Philip’s court. Pérez was an illegitimate son of Gonzalo Pérez, secretary of Philip’s predecessor, the emperor Charles V. Charming and well-connected, Pérez quickly rose in Philip’s

  • Pérez, Carlos Andrés (president of Venezuela)

    Carlos Andrés Pérez was the president of Venezuela from 1974 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1993. Pérez began his political life as a member of the liberal political party Democratic Action, led by Rómulo Betancourt. When Betancourt took power as president of the junta that overthrew Pres. Isaías Medina

  • Pérez, José Joaquín (president of Chile)

    Manuel Montt: …by shifting his support to José Joaquín Pérez, who was a moderate. On giving up the presidency in 1861, Montt became president of the Supreme Court, a post he held at the time of his death.

  • Pérez, Manuel Benítez (Spanish bullfighter)

    El Cordobés was a Spanish bullfighter, the most highly paid torero in history. The crudity of his technique was offset by his exceptional reflexes, courage (sometimes considered total indifference to his own safety), and crowd appeal. Reared in an orphanage in his native town, Benítez was

  • Perez, Rosie (American actress)

    In Living Color: How the color came to life: Actress Rosie Perez earned three Emmy Award nominations (1990, 1992, and 1993) for her work as a choreographer of the Fly Girls’ routines. After Chris Rock left the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, he joined the cast of In Living Color during season five.

  • Pérez, Tony (Cuban-born baseball player)

    Tony Pérez is a Cuban-born professional baseball player who played in the United States for 23 years. He played with the Cincinnati Reds, Montreal Expos, and Philadelphia Phillies of the National League (NL) and the Boston Red Sox of the American League (AL). Pérez was signed by Cincinnati in 1960

  • Perfect (film by Bridges [1985])

    James Bridges: Bridges’s next film, Perfect (1985), centred on the new subculture of health clubs. It starred Travolta as a bright but unscrupulous Rolling Stone reporter on the trail of a story and Jamie Lee Curtis as the club instructor he first exploits, then falls in love with. Perfect, which…

  • perfect binding (printing)

    bookbinding: …them by gluing (called “perfect” binding in the U.S.). Larger books, such as encyclopaedia volumes and other reference books, are usually side sewn (side-sewing machines drill holes through the books, and stitching is done through prepared holes). Other steps, many of which are often linked in automated systems, are…

  • Perfect Blue (film by Satoshi)

    animation: Contemporary developments: Kon Satoshi’s Perfect Blue (1997) suggests the early Japanese New Wave films of director Oshima Nagisa with its violent exploration of a media-damaged personality.

  • perfect cadence (music)

    cadence: …of authentic cadence, called the perfect cadence, the upper voice proceeds stepwise either upward from the leading tone (seventh degree of the scale) or downward from the second degree to the tonic note, while the lowest voice skips from the dominant note upward a fourth or downward a fifth to…

  • perfect competition (economics)

    economics: Law and economics: …welfare economics had promoted “perfect competition” as the best of all possible economic worlds. This theoretical market structure comprised a world of many small firms whose product prices were determined by the sum of all their output decisions in relation to the independent demand of consumers. This perfect condition,…

  • perfect cosmological principle (cosmology)

    Sir Fred Hoyle: …and Gold called it the perfect cosmological principle.

  • Perfect Couple, The (American television miniseries)

    Nicole Kidman: Later work: … (2023– ) and the miniseries The Perfect Couple (2024). In the mystery-drama, which was adapted from the book by Elin Hilderbrand, she was cast as a mother planning her son’s lavish wedding until one of the guests dies. Her other credits from 2024 include the erotic drama Babygirl, in which…

  • Perfect Day for Bananafish, A (work by Salinger)

    J.D. Salinger: …with two British children; “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” (1948) concerns the suicide of the sensitive, despairing veteran Seymour Glass.

  • perfect difference set (mathematics)

    combinatorics: BIB (balanced incomplete block) designs: …said to form a perfect difference set mod υ, if among the k(k − 1) differences di − dj, i ≠ j, i, j = 0, 1, · · ·, k, reduced mod υ, each nonzero positive integer less than υ occurs exactly the same number of times λ. For…

  • perfect digital invariant (mathematics)

    number game: Number patterns and curiosities: … + 33) is called a perfect digital invariant. On the other hand, a recurring digital invariant is illustrated by:

  • perfect flower (plant anatomy)

    flower: Form and types: …or more of these whorls Perfect, or bisexual: a flower with both stamens and pistils; can be complete or incomplete Pistillate, or female: an imperfect (unisexual) flower that lacks stamens Staminate, or male: an imperfect (unisexual) flower that lacks pistils Monoecious: a species in which an individual plant that

  • perfect fluid (physics)

    fluid: The simplest model, called a perfect, or ideal, fluid, is one that is unable to conduct heat or to offer drag on the walls of a tube or internal resistance to one portion flowing over another. Thus, a perfect fluid, even while flowing, cannot sustain a tangential force; that is,…

  • perfect game (baseball)

    Cy Young: …1904, he registered the first perfect game (no player reaching first base) of the modern era, for the Red Sox against the Philadelphia Athletics.

  • perfect gas (chemistry and physics)

    ideal gas, a gas that conforms, in physical behaviour, to a particular idealized relation between pressure, volume, and temperature called the ideal, or general, gas law. This law is a generalization containing both Boyle’s law and Charles’s law as special cases and states that for a specified

  • perfect gas equation of state (chemistry and physics)

    ideal gas law, relation between the pressure P, volume V, and temperature T of a gas in the limit of low pressures and high temperatures, such that the molecules of the gas move almost independently of each other. In such a case, all gases obey an equation of state known as the ideal gas law: PV =

  • perfect gas law (chemistry and physics)

    ideal gas law, relation between the pressure P, volume V, and temperature T of a gas in the limit of low pressures and high temperatures, such that the molecules of the gas move almost independently of each other. In such a case, all gases obey an equation of state known as the ideal gas law: PV =

  • Perfect Getaway, A (film by Twohy [2009])

    Chris Hemsworth: Thor: …menacing hitchhiker in the thriller A Perfect Getaway. He appeared in the minor action movie Ca$h (2010) before his first outing as the title Norse god in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor (2011). The movie told the story of Thor’s arrogant breaching of a peace and being banished to 21st-century Earth to…

  • perfect information (mathematics)

    game theory: Games of perfect information: The simplest game of any real theoretical interest is a two-person constant-sum game of perfect information. Examples of such games include chess, checkers, and the Japanese game of go. In 1912 the German mathematician Ernst Zermelo proved that such games are strictly determined;…

  • Perfect Knowledge (religious knowledge)

    St. Clement of Alexandria: Clement’s view of the roles of faith and knowledge: …was also the basis of gnōsis, a spiritual and mystical knowledge. By distinguishing between two levels of believers—i.e., the pistic Christian, who responds through discipline and lives on the level of God’s law, and the Christian gnostic, who responds through discipline and love and lives on the level of the…

  • Perfect Liberty Church (Japanese religion)

    PL Kyōdan, religious group or church (Japanese: kyōdan) founded in Japan in 1946 by Miki Tokuchika. The movement, unique for the use of English words in its name, is based on the earlier Hito-no-michi sect. It is not affiliated, however, with any of the major religious traditions of Japan. In the

  • Perfect Liberty Kyōdan (Japanese religion)

    PL Kyōdan, religious group or church (Japanese: kyōdan) founded in Japan in 1946 by Miki Tokuchika. The movement, unique for the use of English words in its name, is based on the earlier Hito-no-michi sect. It is not affiliated, however, with any of the major religious traditions of Japan. In the

  • perfect man (mysticism)

    al-Jīlī: …whose doctrines of the “perfect man” became popular throughout the Islamic world.

  • Perfect Manhattan (cocktail)

    Manhattan: Ingredients and varieties: …of the Manhattan include the Perfect Manhattan, with two parts rye whiskey, one-half part dry vermouth, one-half part sweet vermouth, and two dashes of bitters; the Reverse Manhattan, with two parts sweet vermouth, one part rye whiskey, and two to three dashes of bitters; and the Dry Manhattan, with two…

  • Perfect Marriage, The (film by Allen [1946])

    Lewis Allen: …during World War II, while The Perfect Marriage (1946) was a lightweight marital comedy (based on a Broadway play) starring a perpetually feuding couple portrayed by David Niven and Loretta Young. In 1947 Allen directed The Imperfect Lady, a period drama about a politician (Ray Milland) who falls for a…

  • Perfect Married Woman, The (work by León)

    Luis de León: …books of the Bible and La perfecta casada (1583; “The Perfect Married Woman”), a commentary in Spanish on Proverbs 31, incorporating elements of the medieval ascetic tradition of misogyny interspersed with picturesque glimpses of feminine customs of the day.

  • Perfect Murder, A (film by Davis [1998])

    Dial M for Murder: …was released in 1998 as A Perfect Murder.

  • perfect number (mathematics)

    perfect number, a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its proper divisors. The smallest perfect number is 6, which is the sum of 1, 2, and 3. Other perfect numbers are 28, 496, and 8,128. The discovery of such numbers is lost in prehistory. It is known, however, that the Pythagoreans

  • perfect pitch (music)

    pitch: Absolute, or perfect, pitch is the ability to identify by ear any note at some standard pitch or to sing a specified note, say G♯, at will. Fully developed absolute pitch is rare. It appears early in childhood and is apparently an acute form of memory of…

  • Perfect Prince, the (king of Portugal)

    John II was the king of Portugal from 1481 to 1495, regarded as one of the greatest Portuguese rulers, chiefly because of his ruthless assertion of royal authority over the great nobles and his resumption of the exploration of Africa and the quest for India. John was the great-grandson of the

  • Perfect Realization (Daoist sect)

    Taoism: Internal developments: …Liu Deren (1142); and the Quanzhen (“Perfect Realization”) sect, founded in 1163 by Wang Chongyang (Wang Zhe). This last sect came to the favorable attention of the Mongols, who had taken over in the North, and its second patriarch, Qiu Changqun, was invited into Central Asia to preach to Genghis…

  • perfect rectangle (geometry)

    number game: Geometric dissections: …rectangle is said to be perfect. The order of a squared rectangle is the number of constituent squares. It is known that there are no perfect rectangles of orders less than 9, and that there are exactly two perfect rectangles of order 9. (One of these is shown as Figure…

  • Perfect Spy, A (novel by le Carré)

    John le Carré: Le Carré’s later novels include A Perfect Spy (1986; miniseries 1987), the story of a double agent; The Russia House (1989; film 1990); The Secret Pilgrim (1991); The Night Manager (1993; television miniseries 2016); and Our Game (1995), set after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  • Perfect Storm, The (film by Petersen [2000])

    Mark Wahlberg: Russell’s Three Kings (1999); The Perfect Storm (2000), a drama about an ill-fated fishing boat; Planet of the Apes (2001), a remake of the 1968 sci-fi classic; and The Italian Job (2003), which was based on the 1969 British cult hit. In 2006 Wahlberg appeared as a tough Boston…

  • Perfect Stranger (film by Foley [2007])

    Halle Berry: …Willis in the crime film Perfect Stranger (2007). She then took lead roles in the character-oriented dramas Things We Lost in the Fire (2007), as a recent widow, and Frankie & Alice (2010), as a woman with dissociative identity disorder.

  • Perfect Woman, The (film by Kirkland [1920])

    Anita Loos: …notably A Virtuous Vamp (1919), The Perfect Woman (1920), Dangerous Business (1920), Polly of the Follies (1922), and Learning to Love (1925). They also wrote two books, Breaking Into the Movies (1919) and How to Write Photoplays (1921), and on her own Loos wrote two plays for Broadway, The Whole…

  • Perfect World, A (film by Eastwood [1993])

    Clint Eastwood: Films of the 1990s of Clint Eastwood: In the quiet drama A Perfect World (1993), an escaped convict (Kevin Costner) takes a boy (T.J. Lowther) hostage, and an unlikely bond forms between them. Eastwood played a Texas Ranger tracking them down. He made a rare appearance in another director’s film when he played a U.S. Secret…

  • Perfect, Christine (British musician)

    Fleetwood Mac: Later members included Danny Kirwan, Christine McVie (original name Christine Perfect), Bob Welch, Stevie Nicks, and Lindsey Buckingham.

  • Perfect, Josephine Holt (American financier)

    Josephine Holt Perfect Bay was an American financier, the first woman to head a member firm of the New York Stock Exchange. Josephine Perfect grew up in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Brooklyn Heights Seminary and attending Colorado College from 1918 to 1919, she became active in various

  • perfecta (gambling)

    horse racing: Wagers: …of the first two races), perfecta (win and place winners in order in one race), quiniela (as in the perfecta but not in order), and trifecta (win, place, and show winners in order in one race). Other specialty wagers, sometimes offering extremely high payouts, require the bettor to select multiple…

  • perfecta casada, La (work by León)

    Luis de León: …books of the Bible and La perfecta casada (1583; “The Perfect Married Woman”), a commentary in Spanish on Proverbs 31, incorporating elements of the medieval ascetic tradition of misogyny interspersed with picturesque glimpses of feminine customs of the day.

  • perfection (religion)

    Christianity: Monasticism: …on the Christian ideal of perfection, have traditionally been traced to the first apostolic community in Jerusalem—which is described in the Acts of the Apostles—and to Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness. In the early church, monasticism was based on the identification of perfection with world-denying asceticism and on the view…

  • Perfectionism (religion)

    John Humphrey Noyes: …first enunciated his belief in perfectionism, the idea that it is possible for an individual to become free of sin in this life through religious conversion and will power. Noyes declared himself free of sin and in a state of perfection. Because his views were in direct opposition to the…

  • Perfectionists (utopian religious community)

    Oneida Community, utopian religious community that developed out of a Society of Inquiry established by John Humphrey Noyes and some of his disciples in Putney, Vt., U.S., in 1841. As new recruits arrived, the society turned into a socialized community. Noyes had experienced a religious conversion

  • perfective aspect (linguistics)

    Indo-European languages: Verbal inflection: ’ The perfective aspect, traditionally called “aorist,” expressed a single, completed occurrence of an action or process—e.g., *steH2- ‘stand up, come to a stop,’ *men- ‘think of, bring to mind.’ The stative aspect, traditionally called “perfect,” described states of the subject—e.g., *ste-stóH2- ‘be in a standing position,’…

  • Perfidia (novel by Ellroy)

    James Ellroy: Perfidia (2014) was the first volume in his second L.A. Quartet. The novel, which chronologically precedes the events of the earlier series, features many of the same characters and evokes a similarly penumbral view of Los Angeles. The story continues in This Storm (2019), the…

  • perfluorooctanoic acid (chemical compound)

    DuPont Company: …water in West Virginia of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA; also known as C8), which is known to cause developmental problems in laboratory animals. The company also faced litigation and an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in connection with that incident. In 2006 DuPont and seven other companies agreed…

  • perfoliate honeysuckle (plant)

    honeysuckle: Major species: Perfoliate, or sweet, honeysuckle (Lonicera caprifolium) is native to Eurasia but has become established in North America. Its clustered night-blooming purple-white flowers are pollinated mostly by night-feeding hawk moths, because the flower tubes are too long for most other insects to reach the nectar. The fruit is a red-orange…

  • perforated film (photography)

    technology of photography: Perforated film: Some film is perforated along its edges and rolled up on its own inside a light-tight cartridge, which can be loaded into the camera in daylight. Once the camera is closed, a transport sprocket engaging the edge perforations draws the film from the…

  • perforated Saint-John’s-wort (plant)

    weed: Biological control: …the western United States, where Saint-John’s-wort, or Klamath weed (Hypericum perforatum), was subjected to depredation by three insect species, beginning in California in 1945. The release of two insects of the genus Chrysolina and one of the genus Agrilus continued for a number of years, and the effort was carried…

  • perforation plate (botany)

    angiosperm: Organization of the vascular tissue: …end walls are modified into perforation plates, an area or areas in which there is no shared wall material or membrane. Vessel elements join to form continuous vessels. The perforations are much larger than those of the bordered pits of tracheids and are of four types: scalariform (slitlike), foraminate (circular),…

  • performance (arts)

    parasocial interaction: …that they personally know a performer they have encountered in mass media. Parasocial interactions (PSIs) are thought to have a psychological effect similar to that of face-to-face communication. Over time, PSIs with a performer may lead audience members to develop a parasocial relationship—a one-sided sense of connection with the performer.

  • Performance (film by Roeg and Cammell [1970])

    Nicolas Roeg: His first film, Performance (1970), codirected with Donald Cammell, was a psychedelic drama starring Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones as a former pop superstar who is drawn into the criminal underworld of 1960s London when he takes in a gangster on the run.

  • performance (cognitive)

    human behaviour: Cognitive development: …in actual problem-solving situations, called performance. Children often possess knowledge that they do not use even when the occasion calls for it. Adapting to new challenges, according to Piaget, requires two complementary processes. The first, assimilation, is the relating of a new event or object to cognitive structures the child…

  • performance (contract law)

    performance, in law, act of doing that which is required by a contract. The effect of successful performance is to discharge the person bound to do the act from any future contractual liability. Each party to the contract is bound to perform promises according to the stipulated terms. In case of

  • performance art

    performance art, a time-based art form that typically features a live presentation to an audience or to onlookers (as on a street) and draws on such arts as acting, poetry, music, dance, and painting. It is generally an event rather than an artifact, by nature ephemeral, though it is often recorded

  • performance capture (movement digitization process)

    motion capture, the process used to translate physical movement in three-dimensional (3D) space into a digitized and tracked computer format. Motion capture is used primarily in creative animation, as actors or objects can be filmed and have their movement data transposed onto animation assets. The

  • performance-enhancing drug

    Olympics: A Survey of Banned Substances: The use of performance-enhancing drugs among athletes competing in the Olympic Games is not new—as early as 1904, American runner Thomas Hicks was given doses of strychnine during the marathon at the Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri. He ended up winning the race after the first-place finisher…