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Levi, Primo

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
1919-87 Italian writer and chemist He was born of Jewish parents in Turin. He enrolled at Turin University to study chemistry for, as he wrote in Il sistemo periodico (1984, Eng trans The Periodic Table , 1984), he believed that "the nobility of Man … lay in making himself the conqueror of matter". During World War II he fled into the mountains and tried to help set up a small guerrilla force, but this "deluge of outcasts" was accidentally discovered and in December 1943 Levi was arrested, turned over to the SS, and despatched to Auschwitz. He was one of the few to survive, partly, after it was discovered he was Jewish, because he contracted scarlet fever when the Germans evacuated the camp as the Russians approached. Those ten months in Auschwitz haunted him for the rest of his life and may have prompted his suicide. His first book, Se questo è un uomo (Eng trans If This Is a Man , 1959), was completed soon after his return to Turin and was published in 1947. A graphic account of life…
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Full text Article Levi, Primo

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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Full text Article PRISON

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
I lived at Eton in the 1950s and know all about life in uncomfortable quarters. AITKEN, Jonathan The Times , January 1999. [When spotted sewing mailbags during his imprisonment for misappropriation of funds] Visitor : Ah, Bottomley, sewing? Bottomley : No, reaping. [Attr.] The black flower of…
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Full text Article Primo Levi (1919–1987)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
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Full text Article Levi, Primo

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(born July 31, 1919, Turin, Italy—died April 11, 1987, Turin) Italian writer and chemist. Two years after obtaining a degree in chemistry, Levi, who was Jewish, was captured by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz as a slave labourer. His autobiographical works— If This Is a Man , or Survival in…
| 161 words
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Full text Article Levi, Primo

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
1919-87 Italian writer and chemist He was born of Jewish parents in Turin. He enrolled at Turin University to study chemistry for, as he wrote in Il sistemo periodico (1984, Eng trans The Periodic Table , 1984), he believed that "the nobility of Man … lay in making himself the conqueror of matter". …
| 282 words
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Full text Article Quotations by Author

From Chambers Dictionary of Great Quotations
Abbott, Diane Julie 1953- Abelard, Peter 1079-1142 Abercrombie, Lascelles 1881-1938 Abrams, M(eyer) H(oward) 1912- Abse, Dannie 1923-2014 Abu’l-’Alá, Al-Ma’arri 973-1058 Abzug, Bella originally Bella Savitzky 1920-98…
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Full text Article HYPOTHESIS

From Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
American man of letters A science cannot be played with. If an hypothesis is advanced that obviously brings into direct sequence of cause and effect all the phenomena of human history, we must accept it, and if we accept it, we must teach it. The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma The Tendency of…
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Full text Article Italian Americans

From Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America
CENGAGE LEARNING, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED U.S. Census...
Italian Americans are immigrants or descendants of people from Italy, a country in southern Europe. Moored by Alpine mountains in the north, the boot-shaped Italian Peninsula juts into the central Mediterranean Sea. Along its European frontier, Italy shares borders with, from west to east, France, …
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Full text Article CHEMISTRY

From Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
American man of letters The bit of practical teaching he afterwards reviewed with most curiosity was the course in Chemistry, which taught him a number of theories that befogged his mind for a lifetime. The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography Chapter IV (p. 60 ) Houghton Mifflin & Co. …
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Full text Article KNOWLEDGE

From Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations
English instrument maker …mankind…for more than a thousand years, looked up to Aristotle as an oracle in philosophy. His authority was the test of truth; it was a philosophy, says Lord Bacon, fruitful of words, but barren or works; admirably contrived to draw a veil over ignorance, and put a stop to…
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