Mandeb, Strait of or Bab el-Mandeb Vbab-al-'man-deb \ Arabic Bab al-Mandab Strait that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Its land boundaries are the Arabian Peninsula (northeast) and the African coast (southeast), which are separated by some 20 mi (32 km). The strait is divided into two channels by Perim Island. Its name means “Gate of Tears,” referring to the dangers that formerly attended its navigation.
Mandel \ma n -'del\, Georges orig. Louis-Georges Rothschild
(b. June 5, 1885, Chatou, France—d. July 7, 1944, Fontainebleau) French political leader. A member of a prosperous Jewish family, he served as a personal aide to Georges Clemenceau (1906-09, 1917-20), in the National
Assembly (1919-24, 1928^40), and in cabinet posts (1934-40). As min¬ ister of the interior (1940), he supported Paul Reynaud’s refusal to accept an armistice with Germany. Mandel was arrested in 1940, imprisoned in France and Germany, then returned to Paris in 1944, where he was shot on orders of the Vichy police chief.
Mandela \man-'del-3. Nelson (b. July 18, 1918, Umtata, Cape of Good Hope, S.Af.) South African black nationalist leader and states¬ man. The son of a Xhosa chief, Man¬ dela studied law at the University of Witwatersrand and in 1944 joined the African National Congress (ANC). After the Sharpeville massa¬ cre (1960), he abandoned his non¬ violent stance and helped found the “Spear of the Nation,” the ANC’s military wing. Arrested in 1962, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
He retained wide support among South Africa’s black population and became an international cause celebre. Released by Pres. F.W. de Klerk in 1990, he replaced Oliver Tambo as president of the ANC in 1991. In 1993 Mandela and de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end apartheid and bring about the transition to nonra- cial democracy. In 1994 he was elected president in the country’s first universal suffrage elections; by the time he stepped down in 1999, Mandela was the most universally respected figure of postcolonial Africa.
Mandelbrot Vman-dsl-.brotV, Benoit B. (b. Nov. 20, 1924, Warsaw, Pol.) Polish-born U.S. mathematician. He received a doctorate from the University of Paris and emigrated to the U.S. in 1958. He is best known for his work with fractals (a term he coined; see fractal geometry), which, he showed, can occur in many different places in mathematics and in nature. He was influenced by Gaston Maurice Julia (1893-1978), whose work on dynamical systems theory had been forgotten until the 1970s, when Mandelbrot’s fundamental computer experiments and use of com¬ puter graphics breathed new life into it. The Mandelbrot set is a math¬ ematical set of imaginary numbers generated from a simple equation. It appears infinitely complex when graphed on a computer.
Mandelshtam Wsn-dyil-'shtamV Osip (Emilyevich) or Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam (b. Jan. 15, 1891, Warsaw, Pol., Russian Empire—d. Dec. 27, 1938, Vtoraya Rechka, near Vladivostok, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Russian poet and critic. He published his first poems in 1910. A leader of the Acmeist poets, who rejected the mysticism and abstrac¬ tion of Russian Symbolism, he wrote intellectually demanding, apolitical verse in such volumes as Tristia (1922). In 1934 he was arrested for an epigram about Joseph Stalin. While suffering from mental illness, he com¬ posed the Voronezh Notebooks , which contain some of his finest lyrics. Arrested again in 1938, he died in custody at age 47. Most of his works went unpublished in the Soviet Union until after Stalin’s death, and he was almost unknown to generations of Russians and in other countries until the mid 1960s.
Mander \'man-dor \, Karel van (b. May 1548, Meulebeke, Flanders, Spanish Netherlands—d. Sept. 2, 1606, Amsterdam, Neth.) Dutch painter, poet, and writer. Born of a noble family, after much wandering he settled in Haarlem in 1583 and founded a successful academy of painting with Hendrik Goltzius and Cornelis Cornelisz (1562-1638). He is best known for The Book of Painters (1604), which contains about 175 biographies of Dutch, Flemish, and German painters of the 15th—16th centuries; it became for the northern countries what Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Painters had been for Italy.
Mandeville Vman-do-.vilV Sir John (fl. 14th century) English pur¬ ported author of a collection of Middle English traveler’s tales. The tales are selections from the narratives of genuine travelers, embellished with Mandeville’s additions and described as his own adventures. The Voyage and Travels of Sir John Mandeville, Knight originated in French c. 1356- 57; an English version appeared c. 1375. The narrator declares that he is
Nelson Mandela, 1990.
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writing of his travels in the years 1322 to 1356. Because most of the material was available in contempo¬ rary encyclopaedias and travel books, it is not clear whether the author ever traveled at all, but his lit¬ erary skill and imagination have kept the book popular and highly read¬ able. The actual author of the tales remains unknown. It is not certain that the English knight Sir John Mandeville ever existed.
Mandingo See Malinke Mandinka See Malinke
mandolin V.man-do-'linV Small stringed instrument related to the LUTE.
It evolved in the 17th century in Italy, but its present form was strongly influenced by the 19th-century maker Pasquale Vinaccia (1806- 82) of Naples. It has a pear-shaped body with a deeply vaulted back, a short fretted fingerboard, and four pairs of steel strings. (The American folk mandolin is a shallow, flat-backed version.) It is played with a plec¬ trum; each pair of strings is strummed rapidly back and forth to produce a characteristic tremolo.
mandrake Any of six plant species of the genus Mandragora (night¬ shade family), native to the Mediterranean and the Himalayas. The best- known species, M. officinarum, has a short stem bearing a tuft of ovate flowers, with a thick, fleshy, often forked root. The mandrake has long been known for its poisonous properties. In ancient times it was used as a narcotic and an aphrodisiac, and it was believed to have magical pow¬ ers. When pulled from the ground, its forked root, supposed to resemble the human form, was said to utter a shriek that killed or drove mad any¬ one who heard it. Once pulled, however, the plant was said to provide soothing sleep, heal wounds, induce love, and facilitate pregnancy. In North America, the name “mandrake” is often used for the mayapple {Podophyllum peltatum ), a spring forest wildflower.
mandrill Diurnal monkey (family Cercopithecidae, usually genus Man- drillus ) of equatorial African rainfor¬ ests, known for its striking colouring. The stout-bodied, prima¬ rily terrestrial mandrill has a short tail, prominent brow ridges, and small, close-set, sunken eyes. The ribbed bare skin on the adult male’s cheeks is bright blue, with scarlet on the nose; the buttock pads are pink to crimson, shading to bluish; and the beard and neck are yellow. The adult male is about 3 ft (90 cm) long and weighs about 45 lb (20 kg); the female is duller and smaller. Man¬ drills eat fruit, roots, insects, and small reptiles and amphibians.
Manes See Mani
Manet \ma-'na\, Edouard (b.
Jan. 23,1832, Paris, France—d. April 30, 1883, Paris) French painter and printmaker. His father, a prosperous civil servant, wanted him to pursue a naval career, but he was a poor student interested only in drawing. After having a few paintings accepted by the Salon, in 1863 the jury of the Salon rejected his Dejeuner sur I’herbe, and so Manet instead exhibited it at the Salon des Refuses (established to exhibit the many works rejected by the official Salon). This large canvas aroused loud disapproval from critics, who were offended by the presence of a naked woman in the company of two young men clothed in contemporary dress. At the Salon of 1865, his painting Olympia, created two years earlier, also caused a scandaclass="underline" the painting’s reclining female nude gazes brazenly at the viewer and is depicted in a harsh, brilliant light that obliterates traditional modeling and turns her into an almost two-dimensional figure. In the mid 1870s he