Bechuanaland See Botswana
Beck, Ludwig (b. June 29, 1880, Biebrich, Ger.—d. July 20, 1944, Berlin) German general. After serving with the army general staff in World War I, he was later chief of the general staff (1935—38). He opposed Adolf Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland and resigned to protest the decision to conquer Czechoslovakia. He helped plan the unsuccessful July Plot to assassinate Hitler; when it failed, Beck committed suicide.
Beckenbauer, Franz (b. Sept. 11, 1945, Munich, Ger.) German foot¬ ball (soccer) player. He is credited with inventing the modern attacking sweeper position. Nicknamed “Der Kaiser,” Beckenbauer is the only man to both captain and manage World Cup-winning teams (1974 and 1990, respectively). He spent most of his career with Bayern Munich (1958— 77), leading the team to three European Cup championships (1974-76) and four national titles. He was named European Footballer of the Year in 1972 and 1976. After brief stints in New York and Hamburg, he retired in 1984 and turned to managing.
Becker, Boris (Franz) (b. Nov. 22, 1967, Leimen, W.Ger.) German tennis player. He left school in the 10th grade to concentrate on tennis. In 1985 he became the youngest winner (at 17) of the Wimbledon’s men’s singles title and the youngest ever to win a men’s grand-slam tournament, as well as the only unseeded player and the first German ever to win the title. He was victorious at Wimbledon again in 1986 and 1989 and also won singles titles at the 1989 U.S. Open and the 1991 and 1996 Austra¬ lian Open.
Becker, Gary S(tanley) (b. Dec. 2, 1930, Pottsville, Pa., U.S.) U.S. economist. He studied at Princeton University and the University of Chi¬ cago. As a professor at Columbia University and the University of Chi¬ cago, he applied the methods of economics to aspects of human behaviour previously considered the domain of sociology and demography. In Human Capital (1964) and A Treatise on the Family (1981), he advanced the theory that rational economic choices, based on self-interest, govern most human activities, even apparently noneconomic activities such as the formation of families. He won the Nobel Prize in 1992.
Becket, Saint Thomas or Thomas a Becket (b. c. 1118, Cheap- side, London, Eng.—d. Dec. 29,
1170, Canterbury, Kent; canonized 1173; feast day December 29) Arch¬ bishop of Canterbury (1162-70).
The son of a Norman merchant, he served as chancellor of England (1155-62) under Henry II. whose entire trust he won. A brilliant administrator, diplomat, and military strategist, he aided the king in increasing the royal power. Resistant to the Gregorian reform movement that asserted the autonomy of the church, Henry hoped to reinforce royal control of the church by appointing Becket archbishop of Canterbury in 1162. Becket, how¬ ever, embraced his new duties devoutly and opposed royal power in the church, especially proclaiming the right of offending clerics to be tried in ecclesiastical courts. The king issued the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164) listing royal rights over the church, and he summoned the archbishop to trial. Becket fled to France and remained in exile until 1170, when he returned to Canterbury and was murdered in the cathedral by four of Henry’s knights, traditionally said to be acting in response to the king’s angry words. Becket’s tomb, which was visited by Henry in an act of penance, became a site of pilgrimage.
Beckett, Samuel (Barclay) (b. April 13?, 1906, Foxrock, Co. Dub¬ lin, Ire.—d. Dec. 22, 1989, Paris,
France) Irish playwright. After studying in Ireland and traveling, he settled in Paris in 1937. During World War II he supported himself as a farmworker and joined the under¬ ground resistance. In the postwar years he wrote, in French, the narra¬ tive trilogy Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953). His play Waiting for Godot (1952) was an immediate success in Paris and gained worldwide acclaim when he translated it into English.
Marked by minimal plot and action, existentialist ideas, and humour, it typifies the Theatre of the Absurd. His later plays, also sparsely staged, abstract works that deal with the mystery and despair of human exist¬ ence, include Endgame (1957),
Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), and Happy Days (1961). In 1969 he was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Beckford, William (b. Sept. 29,1760, London, Eng.—d. May 2,1844, Bath, Somerset) English dilettante, novelist, and eccentric. He is remem¬ bered for his gothic novel Vathek (1786), about an impious voluptuary who builds a tower so high that he challenges Muhammad in heaven and so brings about his own fall to the kingdom of the prince of darkness; though unevenly written, the story is full of invention and bizarre detail. Beckford and his family were forced to leave England for 10 years by a scandal involving a youth. On his return he built Fonthill Abbey, the most sensational building of the English Gothic Revival, whose own 270-ft (82-m) tower collapsed several times.
Beckmann Vbek-.manV Max (b. Feb. 12, 1884, Leipzig, Ger.—d. Dec. 27, 1950, New York, N.Y., U.S.) German Expressionist painter and graphic artist. After training at the conservative Weimar Academy, in 1903 he moved to Berlin and joined the Berlin Sezession. His experience as a medical orderly in World War I changed his outlook, and his work became full of horrifying imagery, with deliberately repulsive colours and erratic forms. He considered his work to be a combination of brutal realism and
Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, illustra¬ tion from an English psalter, c. 1220; in the British Library.
©THE BRITISH LIBRARY/HERITAGE-IMAGES
Samuel Beckett, 1965.
© GISELE FREUND
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Becknell ► bedstraw I 187
social commentary. In 1933 the Nazis declared his art “degenerate” and forced him to resign his professorship at the Stadel School of Art in Frankfurt. In 1937 he fled to Amsterdam, and in 1947 he moved to the U.S., where he taught in St. Louis, Mo., and New York City.
Becknell \'bek-n 3 l\, William (b. 1796?, Amherst county, Va., U.S.—d. April 30, 1865, Texas) U.S. trader. After settling in Missouri, he became involved in trade with the Southwest. When the Spanish prohibition on trade with New Mexico was lifted in 1821, he followed the customary route through the Colorado Rocky Mountains south to Santa Fe, where he sold his goods at great profit. The next year he pioneered a new route through the mountains of northeastern New Mexico that became known as the Santa Fe Trail. In the mid-1830s he moved to Texas, where he fought for Texas’s independence.
Beckwourth, Jim orig. James Pierson Beckwith (b. April 26, 1798, Virginia, U.S.—d. 1867?, Denver, Colo.) U.S. mountain man. Bom a slave, the son of a white man and a slave woman, he was taken by his father to St. Louis and set free. In 1823-24 he was hired by trading expe¬ ditions in the Rocky Mountains. He married a series of Indian women and lived among the Crow for about six years. During the California gold rush (1848) he established a route through the Sierra Nevada. In Califor¬ nia he met Thomas D. Bonner, who in 1856 published many of Beck- wourth’s stories and recollections.
Becquerel \be-'krel\, (Antoine-) Henri (b. Dec. 15, 1852, Paris, France—d. Aug. 25, 1908, Le Croisic) French physicist. His grandfather, Antoine-Cesar (1788-1878), was one of the founders of the field of elec¬ trochemistry, and his father, Alexandre-Edmond (1820-91), made impor¬ tant studies of light phenomena. Henri likewise studied phosphorescent materials as well as uranium compounds and employed photography in his experiments. He is remembered for his discovery of radioactivity, which occurred when he found that the element uranium (in a sample of pitchblende) emitted invisible rays that could darken a photographic plate. His 1901 report of a burn caused by a sample of Marie Curie’s radium that he carried in his vest pocket led to investigations by physicians and ulti¬ mately the medical use of radioactive substances. In 1903 he shared a Nobel Prize for Physics with the Curies. The unit of radioactivity, the becquerel (Bq), is named for him.