Thomas, Isaiah, 1749-1831, American patriot and printer, from Worcester, Mass. Thomas printed outspoken Whig editorials in the Massachusetts Spy, a newspaper that he helped to found. He fought at the battles of Lexington and Concord and after the Revolution settled in Worcester as a printer. He published in 1783 A Specimen of Isaiah Thomas's Printing Types, valued as evidence of the printing equipment of a leading American printer of the time. His other ventures included the Massachusetts Magazine (1789-95) and a folio Bible (1791). In 1810 he published the History of Printing in America, compiling during his research one of the most important collections of early American newspapers and pamphlets. He also founded and endowed the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester.

Isaiah, Ascension of: see Pseudepigrapha.

Isaiah, prophetic book of the Bible. It is a collection of prophecies from a 300-year period attributed to Isaiah, who may have been a priest. Some scholars argue that a long-lived "school" of Isaiah preserved his oracles and supplemented them in succeeding centuries. He received his call to prophesy in the year of King Uzziah's death (c.742 B.C.) and preached during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. His message was partly political; he urged King Hezekiah to recognize the power of Assyria, then at its height, and not to ally himself with Egypt, as a party of nobles urged. Like other 8th-century prophets (Amos, Hosea, Micah), Isaiah indicts the people of God for perpetrating social injustice. The book falls into the following major sections. First are oracles of doom against Judah and Assyria interspersed with oracles of salvation in which a Davidic king and a renewed Jerusalem play prominent roles. These are followed by oracles against foreign nations and prophecies announcing the destruction and subsequent redemption of Zion. Next is an account (paralleled in 2 Kings) of Sennacherib's unsuccessful siege of Jerusalem and his assassination long after. The sickness of Hezekiah is recounted; his prayer and his subsequent recovery are followed by his reception of an embassy from Babylon and prophecy of captivity there. The rest of the book is divided into three parts—delivery from captivity, redemption from sin, and the redeemed state of Israel. The book contains prophecies interpreted by Christians as references to Christ; the most famous such prophecy is the vision of the suffering servant. Later biblical allusions to Isaiah are frequent. Among the Dead Sea Scrolls are two manuscripts of the book of Isaiah dating from the 2d-1st cent. B.C. As pre-Masoretic texts, these are important witnesses for establishing the contours of the Hebrew text of Isaiah 1,000 years before the earliest extant manuscripts of the Masoretic text.

Bowman, Isaiah, 1878-1950, American geographer, b. Waterloo, Ont., B.S. Harvard, 1905, Ph.D. Yale, 1909. He taught geography at Yale (1905-15) and was director (1915-35) of the American Geographical Society. He led the first Yale South American expedition (1907), served as geographer-geologist on the Yale Peruvian expedition (1911), and led the American Geographical Society Expedition to the Central Andes (1913). He was chief territorial adviser to President Wilson at the Versailles conference and served the Dept. of State as territorial adviser in World War II. Bowman was a member of the executive committee of the National Research Council from 1919 to 1929 and was its chairman from 1933 to 1935. He was president of Johns Hopkins Univ. from 1935 until his retirement in 1948. His work on many commissions and boards includes contributions as an active officer of the Explorers Club, the Association of American Geographers, and the Council of Foreign Relations and as president (1931-34) of the International Geographical Union, and as vice president (1940-45) of the National Academy of Sciences. Bowman's books include Forest Physiography (1911); The Andes of Southern Peru (1916); Desert Trails of the Atacama (1924); The New World (1922); The Pioneer Fringe (1931); and Design for Scholarship (1936).

Berlin, Sir Isaiah, 1909-97, English political scientist, b. Riga, Latvia (then in Russia). His family moved to St. Petersburg when he was a boy and emigrated to London in 1921. He was educated at Oxford, where he became a fellow (1932), a professor of social and political theory (1957-67), and president of Wolfson College (1966-75). In The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953), Berlin explored Leo Tolstoy's view of irresistible historical forces, and in Historical Inevitability (1954) he attacked both determinist and relativist approaches to history as superficial and fallacious. His other works include Karl Marx (3d ed. 1963), Four Essays on Liberty (1969), Personal Impressions (1980), and the essay collection The Proper Study of Mankind (1997). He was knighted in 1957.

(born April 30, 1961, Chicago, Ill., U.S.) U.S. basketball player, coach, and executive. He led Indiana University to a national collegiate h1 in 1981. As a guard for the Detroit Pistons (1981–94), he amassed 9,061 career assists and helped the team win two NBA championships (1989, 1990); he is regarded as one of the greatest point guards of all time. He subsequently worked as general manager for the Toronto Raptors and New York Knicks and coached the Indiana Pacers.

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(flourished 8th century BC, Jerusalem) Prophet of ancient Israel after whom the biblical book of Isaiah is named. He is believed to have written only some of the book's first 39 chapters; the rest are by one or more unknown authors. Isaiah's call to prophesy came circa 742 BC, when Assyria was beginning the westward expansion that later overran Israel. A contemporary of Amos, Isaiah denounced economic and social injustice among the Israelites and urged them to obey the Law or risk cancellation of God's covenant. He correctly predicted the destruction of Samaria, or northern Israel, in 722 BC, and he declared the Assyrians to be the instrument of God's wrath. The Christian Gospels lean more heavily on the book of Isaiah than on any other prophetic text, and its “swords-into-plowshares” passage has universal appeal.

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(born June 9, 1909, Riga, Latvia—died Nov. 5, 1997, Oxford, Eng.) Latvian-born British political philosopher and historian of ideas. His family immigrated to Britain in 1920. Educated at the University of Oxford, Berlin taught there from 1950 to 1967, serving as president of Wolfson College from 1966 to 1975 and thereafter teaching at All Souls College. His writings on political philosophy are chiefly concerned with the problem of free will in increasingly totalitarian and mechanistic societies. His most important works include Karl Marx (1939), The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953), Historical Inevitability (1955), The Age of Enlightenment (1956), and Four Essays on Liberty (1969).

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