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Rush ► Russell I 1653
many parts of the world, common rushes are woven into chair bottoms, mats, and basketwork, while rush pith serves as wicks in open oil lamps and tallow candles (rushlights). Other rushes include the bulrush (family Typhaceae), the horsetail (or scouring rush), the flowering rush (Butomus umbellatus, family Butomaceae), and the sweet rush, or sweet flag (Acorus calamus, ARUM family).
Rush, Benjamin (b. Jan. 4, 1746, Byberry, near Philadelphia, Pa.—d. April 19, 1813, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.) U.S. physician and political leader. He attended the College of New Jersey at Princeton. As a doctor, he was a dogmatic theorist who proposed that all diseases are fevers caused by overstimulation of blood vessels, with a simple remedy— bloodletting and purges. He advocated humane treatment for insane patients; his idea that insanity often had physical causes marked a sig¬ nificant advance. He wrote the first chemistry textbook and the first psy¬ chiatry treatise in the U.S. An early and active American patriot and a member of the Continental Congress, Rush drafted a resolution urging independence and signed the Declaration of Independence.
Rush, Richard (b. Aug. 29, 1780, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—d. July 30, 1859, Philadelphia) U.S. diplomat. The son of Benjamin Rush, he served as U.S. attorney general (1814-17) and secretary of the treasury (1825-29). As acting secretary of state (1817), he negotiated the Rush-Bagot Agree¬ ment with Britain, which limited naval forces on the Great Lakes after the War of 1812. As U.S. minister to Britain (1817-25), he negotiated an agree¬ ment fixing the border between Canada and the U.S. at the 49th parallel. In conferences on Latin America, he helped formulate the Monroe Doctrine. In 1836, as the U.S. agent in London, he received the bequest by which James Smithson founded the Smithsonian Institution; Rush considered his role in founding the museum his most important public service.
Rushdie \'rush-de,\ commonly Vrosh-deV, (Ahmed) Salman (b. June 19, 1947, Bombay, India) Indian-British novelist. Educated at the Uni¬ versity of Cambridge, he worked as an advertising copywriter in London in the 1970s before winning unexpected success with Midnight’s Chil¬ dren (1981, Booker Prize), an allegorical novel about modem India. His second novel, Shame (1983), is a scathing portrait of politics and sexual morality in Pakistan. The Satanic Verses (1988), which includes among its bizarre happenings some episodes based on the life of Muhammad, was denounced as blasphemous by outraged Muslim leaders, and in 1989 Rushdie was condemned to death by Iran’s Ruhollah Khomeini. He became the focus of enormous international attention and was compelled to remain in hiding for years. His later novels include The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995) and Fury (2001).
Rushing, Jimmy orig. James Andrew Rushing (b. Aug. 26, 1903, Oklahoma City, Okla., U.S.—d. June 8, 1972, New York, N.Y.) U.S. blues and jazz singer. Rushing joined Count Basie’s first group in 1935, gaining exposure through many recordings, and remained until 1950. He thereafter led his own small groups or worked with the bands of Benny Goodman, Buck Clayton, and occasionally Basie. Rushing’s full tenor voice, although associated with the blues-based repertoire of the Basie period, was also well suited to popular songs and ballads.
Rusk, (David) Dean (b. Feb. 9, 1909, Cherokee county, Ga., U.S.—d. Dec. 20, 1994, Athens, Ga.) U.S. secretary of state (1961-69) and edu¬ cator. He earned a master’s degree as a Rhodes scholar at St. John’s Col¬ lege, Oxford, and then taught (1934-40) at Mills College in Oakland, Calif. He served in World War II on Gen. Joseph Stilwell’s staff. He later held positions in the U.S. State Department and War Department, help¬ ing prosecute the Korean War as an assistant secretary of state (1950). After serving as president of the Rockefeller Foundation (1952-60), he became U.S. secretary of state under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. A consistent defender of U.S. participation in the Vietnam War, he became a target of antiwar protests. He also opposed diplomatic rec¬ ognition of China. After retiring from public life, he taught at the Uni¬ versity of Georgia until 1984.
Ruskin, John (b. Feb. 8, 1819, London, Eng.—d. Jan. 20, 1900, Conis- ton, Lancashire) English art critic. Born into a wealthy family, Ruskin was largely educated at home. He was a gifted painter, but the best of his talent went into his writing. His multivolume Modern Painters (1843— 60), planned as a defense of painter J.M.W. Turner, expanded to become a general survey of art. In Turner he saw “truth to nature” in landscape painting, and he went on to find the same truthfulness in Gothic architec¬ ture. His other writings include The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851-53). He was also a defender of the Pre-
Raphaelites. In 1869 he was elected Oxford’s first Slade professor of fine art; he resigned in 1879 after James McNeill Whistler won a libel suit against him. In later years he used his inherited wealth to promote ide¬ alistic social causes, but his powerful rhetoric, which still contained strik¬ ing insights, became marred by bigotry and occasional incoherence. Ruskin remains the preeminent art critic of 19th-century Britain.
Russell, Bertrand (Arthur William), 3rd Earl Russell (b. May
18, 1872, Trelleck, Monmouthshire,
Eng.—d. Feb. 2,1970, near Penrhyn- deudraeth, Merioneth, Wales) British logician and philosopher. He is best known for his work in mathematical logic and for his advocacy on behalf of a variety of social and political causes, especially pacifism and nuclear disarmament. He was born into the British nobility as the grand¬ son of Earl Russell, who was twice prime minister of Britain in the mid- 19th century. He studied mathemat¬ ics and philosophy at Cambridge University, where he came under the influence of the idealist philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart, though he soon rejected idealism in favour of an extreme Platonic realism. In an early paper, “On Denoting” (1905), he solved a notorious puzzle in the phi¬ losophy of language by showing how phrases such as “The present king of France,” which have no referents, function logically as general statements rather than as proper names. Rus¬ sell later regarded this discovery, which came to be known as the “theory of descriptions,” as one of his most important contributions to philosophy. In The Principles of Mathematics (1903) and the epochal Principia Math- ematica (3 vol., 1910—13), which he wrote with Alfred North Whitehead, he sought to demonstrate that the whole of mathematics derives from logic. For his pacifism in World War I he lost his lectureship at Cambridge and was later imprisoned. (He would abandon pacifism in 1939 in the face of Nazi aggression.) Russell’s best-developed metaphysical doctrine, logical atomism, strongly influenced the school of logical positivism. His later philo¬ sophical works include The Analysis of Mind (1921), The Analysis of Mat¬ ter (1927), and Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948). His A History of Western Philosophy (1945), which he wrote for a popular audi¬ ence, became a best-seller and was for many years the main source of his income. Among his many works on social and political topics are Roads to Freedom (1918); The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920), a scathing critique of Soviet communism; On Education (1926); and Marriage and Morals (1929). In part because of the controversial views he espoused in the latter work, he was prevented from accepting a teaching position at the City College of New York in 1940. After World War II he became a leader in the worldwide campaign for nuclear disarmament, serving as first presi¬ dent of the international Pugwash Conferences on nuclear weapons and world security and of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In 1961, at the age of 89, he was imprisoned for a second time for inciting civil dis¬ obedience. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.