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Jacob
Hebrew patriarch, son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, and the traditional ancestor of the people of Israel. His story is told in the Book of Genesis. The younger twin brother of Esau, he used trickery to gain Isaac's blessing and Esau's birthright. On a journey to Canaan he wrestled all night with an angel, who blessed him and gave him the name Israel. Jacob had 13 children, 10 of whom founded tribes of Israel. His favorite son, Joseph, was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, but they were later reunited when a famine forced Jacob to go to Egypt to seek grain.

French biologist. After receiving his doctorate he went to work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Beginning in 1958, he worked with J. Monod studying the regulation of bacterial enzyme synthesis. They discovered regulator genes, so called because they control the activities of other genes. Jacob and Monod also proposed the existence of an RNA messenger, a partial copy of DNA that carries genetic information to other parts of the cell. The two men shared a 1965 Nobel Prize with André Lwoff.


Jacobite
In British history, a supporter of the exiled Stuart king James II (Latin, Jacobus) and his descendants after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The movement was strong in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland and included Catholics and Anglican Tories. The Jacobites, especially under William III and Queen Anne, could offer a feasible alternative title to the crown, and several attempts were made to restore the Stuarts. In 1689 James II landed in Ireland, but his army was defeated at the Battle of the Boyne. In the Fifteen Rebellion (1715), led by John Erskine, 6th earl of Mar (1675-1732), Jacobites tried to seize the crown for J. Stuart, the Old Pretender. In the Forty-five Rebellion (1745) C. Stuart, the Young Pretender, took Scotland, but the Jacobite army was crushed at the Battle of Culloden (1746).


Jakobson
Russian-U.S. linguist. Born and educated in Moscow, Jakobson moved to Prague in 1920; the European political situation forced him to flee to Scandinavia in 1938, and to the U.S. in 1941. He taught at Harvard Univ. 1949-67. His interests ranged from folk epics and the cultural history of the Slavs to general phonology, the morphology of the Slavic languages, and speech acquisition. His preoccupation with contrast and opposition is reflected in his analysis of the Russian case system (1938), a brilliant analysis of the Russian verbal system (1948), and preeminently in his work on distinctive features in phonology.


Jaworski
U.S. lawyer. Born in Waco, Texas, he became a prominent attorney, and was a prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials (1945-46). He reached national prominence in 1973, when he was chosen as special prosecutor to investigate the Watergate scandal. He argued successfully before the U.S. Supreme Court that Pres. R. Nixon was obligated to obey a subpoena for 64 White House tape recordings. In ...

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