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pilaster

(Encyclopedia)pilaster pĭlăsˈtər [key], in architecture, upright supporting member, attached to and projecting slightly from the face of a wall and equipped with a base and capital like a column; also, a simila...

flagellants

(Encyclopedia)flagellants flăjˈələnts, fləjĕlˈənts [key], term applied to the groups of Christians who practiced public flagellation as a penance. The practice supposedly grew out of the floggings administe...

Dedekind, Julius Wilhelm Richard

(Encyclopedia)Dedekind, Julius Wilhelm Richard yo͞olˈyo͝os vĭlˈhĕlm rĭkhˈärt dāˈdəkĭnt [key], 1831–1916, German mathematician. Dedekind studied at Göttingen under the German mathematician Carl Gauss...

ampere

(Encyclopedia)ampere ămˈpēr [key], abbr. amp or A, basic unit of electric current. It is the fundamental electrical unit used with the mks system of units of the metric system. The ampere is officially defined a...

Gault, in re

(Encyclopedia)Gault, in re ĭn rā gôlt [key], case decided in 1967 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Fifteen-year-old Gerald Gault had been found a delinquent by an Arizona juvenile court and sentenced to the state indu...

Ostwald, Wilhelm

(Encyclopedia)Ostwald, Wilhelm vĭlˈhĕlm ôstˈvält [key], 1853–1932, German physical chemist and natural philosopher, b. Riga, Latvia. He was professor of chemistry and director of the chemical laboratory (18...

original sin

(Encyclopedia)original sin, in Christian theology, the sin of Adam, by which all humankind fell from divine grace. Saint Augustine was the fundamental theologian in the formulation of this doctrine, which states th...

Manchester school

(Encyclopedia)Manchester school, group of English political economists of the 19th cent., so called because they met at Manchester. Their most outstanding leaders were Richard Cobden and John Bright. Their chief te...

Kendall, Henry Way

(Encyclopedia)Kendall, Henry Way, 1926–99, American physicist. A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kendall won the 1990 Nobel Prize in Physics with Jerome Friedman and Richard Taylor for a s...

subtraction

(Encyclopedia)subtraction, fundamental operation of arithmetic; the inverse of addition. If a and b are real numbers (see number), then the number a−b is that number (called the difference) which when added to b ...