Search

Search results

Displaying 261 - 270

Anaxagoras

(Encyclopedia) AnaxagorasAnaxagorasănˌəksăgˈərəs [key], c.500–428 b.c., Greek philosopher of Clazomenae. He is credited with having transferred the seat of philosophy to Athens. He was closely…

Euler, Leonhard

(Encyclopedia) Euler, LeonhardEuler, Leonhardlāˈônhärt oiˈlər [key], 1707–83, Swiss mathematician. Born and educated at Basel, where he knew the Bernoullis, he went to St. Petersburg (1727) at the…

Cape Canaveral

(Encyclopedia) Cape CanaveralCape Canaveralkənăvˈərəl [key], low, sandy promontory extending E into the Atlantic Ocean from a barrier island, E Fla., separated from Merritt Island by the Banana River…

Bond, George Phillips

(Encyclopedia) Bond, George Phillips, 1825–65, American astronomer, b. near Boston, grad. Harvard, 1845. He became the assistant of his father, William Cranch Bond, and in 1859 succeeded him as…

orbit

(Encyclopedia) CE5 Important points in a planet's orbit as seen from the earth orbit, in astronomy, path in space described by a body revolving about a second body where the motion of the…

Ptolemaic system

(Encyclopedia) Ptolemaic systemPtolemaic systemtŏlˌəmāˈĭk [key], historically the most influential of the geocentric cosmological theories, i.e., theories that placed the earth motionless at the…

crater

(Encyclopedia) crater, circular, bowl-shaped depression on the earth's surface. (For a discussion of lunar craters, see moon.) Simple craters are bowl-shaped with a raised outer rim. Complex craters…

calendar

(Encyclopedia) calendar [Lat., from Kalends], system of reckoning time for the practical purpose of recording past events and calculating dates for future plans. The calendar is based on noting…

Lively, Dame Penelope

(Encyclopedia) Lively, Dame Penelope, 1933–, English novelist, b. Cairo, Egypt, moved to London at 12 when her parents divorced, grad. Oxford (1954). Her earliest books were children's novels—the…

Doowop Music

(Encyclopedia) Doowop (also spelled doo-wop or doo wop) music, American popular vocal music style, c. late 1940s-early 1960s. Doowop is a form of…