Burbage Vbor-bijV Richard (b. c. 1567, London, Eng.—d. March 9/13, 1619, London) British actor. A popular actor by age 20, he was a member of the Earl of Leicester’s company and the Chamberlain’s (later King’s) Men. Closely associated with William Shakespeare, he was the first to play roles such as Richard III, Romeo, Henry V, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear. He also performed in plays by Thomas Kyd, Ben Jonson, and John Webster. He was a major shareholder of the Globe The¬ atre and the Blackfriars Theatre.
Burbank, Luther (b. March 7, 1849, Lancaster, Mass., U.S.—d. April 11, 1926, Santa Rosa, Cal.) U.S. plant breeder. He was reared on a farm and never obtained a college education. Influenced by Charles Darwin’s writings on domesticated plants, he began a plant-breeding career at age 21. On the proceeds of his rapid development of the hugely successful Burbank potato, he set up a nursery garden, greenhouse, and experimen-
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tal farms in Santa Rosa, Cal. There he developed more than 800 new and useful strains and varieties of fruits, flowers, vegetables, grains, and grasses, many of which are still com¬ mercially important. His laboratory became world-famous, and he helped make plant breeding a mod¬ em science. He published two mul¬ tivolume works and a series of descriptive catalogs.
Burbidge, (Eleanor) Marga¬ ret orig. Eleanor Margaret Peachey (b. Aug. 12, 1919, Dav¬ enport, Cheshire, Eng.) English astronomer. She served as acting director (1950-51) of the Observa¬ tory of the University of London. In 1955 her husband, Geoffrey Bur¬ bidge (b. 1925), became a researcher at the Mount Wilson Observatory, and she accepted a research post at Caltech. She later joined the faculty at UC-San Diego, briefly serving as director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory (1972-73). Jointly with her husband, she made notable con¬ tributions to the theory of quasars and to the understanding of how the elements are formed in the depths of stars through nuclear fusion (nucleo¬ synthesis).
burbot Vbar-botX Elongated fish ( Lota lota), the only freshwater mem¬ ber of the cod family. It lives in cold rivers and lakes of Europe, Asia, and North America. A mottled, greenish or brown bottom-dweller, it descends as deep as 700 ft (200 m). It may grow about 3.6 ft (1.1 m) long. It has very small, embedded scales, a long anal fin, and two dorsal fins. The burbot is valued as food in some areas.
Burchfield, Charles (Ephraim) (b. April 9, 1893, Ashtabula Har¬ bor, Ohio, U.S.—d. Jan. 10, 1967, Gardenville, N.Y.) U.S. painter. He attended the Cleveland School of Art and, after service in World War I, worked as a wallpaper designer in Buffalo, N.Y. In the 1920s and ’30s he was one of the leading painters of American life; his work was asso¬ ciated with Edward Hopper’s in its portrayal of the loneliness and bleak¬ ness of small-town life (e.g., November Evening , 1934). In the 1940s he abandoned realism for a more personal interpretation of nature, empha¬ sizing its mystery, movement, and colour from season to season (e.g.. The Sphinx and the Milky Way, 1946).
Burckhardt \'burk- I hart\, Jacob (Christopher) (b. May 25, 1818, Basel, Switz.—d. Aug. 8, 1897, Basel) Swiss historian of art and culture. After abandoning his study of theology, Burckhardt studied art history, then a new field, at the University of Berlin (1839-43). As he matured he became a cultural conservative, alienated from the contemporary world and preoccupied with reclaiming the past. From 1843 he taught primarily at the University of Basel; from 1886 until his retirement in 1893 he taught art history exclusively. He is famous for The Civilization of the Renais¬ sance in Italy (1860), which examines daily life in the Renaissance in terms of such phenomena as the development of individuality and the modern sense of humour; it became a model for cultural historians. He died while working on a four-volume survey of Greek civilization.
burdock Any plant of the genus Arctium, in the composite family, bear¬ ing globular flower heads with prickly bracts. Native to Europe and Asia, burdock species have been naturalized throughout North America. Regarded as weeds in the U.S., they are cultivated for their edible root in Asia. Their fruits are round burrs that stick to clothing and fur.
Bureau of Standards since 1988 U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Agency of the U.S. Depart¬ ment of Commerce responsible for the standardization of weights and measures, timekeeping, and navigation. Active since at least the mid-19th century, the agency works closely with the U.S. Naval Observatory and the Bureau International de l’Heure in Paris to ensure global standardized time.
bureaucracy Professional corps of officials organized in a pyramidal hierarchy and functioning under impersonal, uniform rules and proce¬
dures. Its characteristics were first formulated systematically by Max Weber, who saw in the bureaucratic organization a highly developed divi¬ sion of labour, authority based on administrative rules rather than personal allegiance or social custom, and a “rational” and impersonal institution whose members function more as “offices” than as individuals. For Weber, bureaucracy was a form of legalistic “domination” inevitable under capi¬ talism. Later writers saw in bureaucracy a tendency to concentrate power at the top and become dictatorial, as occurred in the Soviet Union. Robert K. Merton emphasized its red tape and inefficiency due to blind confor¬ mity to procedures. More recent theories have stressed the role of mana¬ gerial cliques, occupational interest groups, or individual power-seekers in creating politicized organizations characterized by internal conflict.
Burgas \bur-'gas\ City (pop., 2001: 802,932), eastern Bulgaria. Located on an inlet of the Black Sea, it is one of Bulgaria’s chief ports. It was founded in the 17th century; its development received impetus with the coming of the railroad in the late 19th century. It claims much of Bulgar¬ ia’s Black Sea trade and handles most of its fish catch. With several neighbouring towns, Burgas is part of the developing Black Sea Riviera.
Burger Vbmr-gsrV Gottfried August (b. Dec. 31, 1747, Molmers- wende bei Halberstadt, Brandenburg—d. June 8, 1794, Gottingen, Hanover) German poet. He was associated with the Gottinger Hain, a circle of Sturm und Drang poets who reawakened interest in folk and nature themes. His bizarre ballad “Lenore” (1773) had a profound effect on the subsequent development of literary Romanticism throughout Europe, and he is remembered as a founder of German Romantic ballad literature. He is also noted for his Petrarchan sonnets and translations from English, especially Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.
Burger, Warren E(arl) (b. Sept. 17, 1907, St. Paul, Minn., U.S.—d. June 25, 1995, Washington, D.C.) U.S. jurist. He graduated with honours from St. Paul (now William Mitchell) College of Law in 1931, after which he joined a prominent law firm and became active in the Republican Party. He was appointed an assistant U.S. attorney general (1953) and named to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (1955), where his conservative approach commended him to Pres. Richard Nixon, who nominated him for chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1969. Contrary to the expectations of some, he did not try to reverse the liberal decisions on civil-rights issues and criminal law made during the tenure of his predecessor, Earl Warren. Under his leadership, the court upheld the 1966 Miranda v. Arizona decision, permitted busing as a means of ending racial segregation in public schools, and endorsed the use of racial quotas in the awarding of federal grants and contracts. Burger voted with the majority in Roe v. Wade (1973). Keenly interested in judicial administration, he became deeply involved in efforts to improve the judi¬ ciary’s efficiency. He retired in 1986 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988.