Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

492 results found

Franck, James

(Encyclopedia)Franck, James frängk [key], 1882–1964, German physicist. He was professor of physics at Göttingen and at Johns Hopkins (1935–38) and professor of physical chemistry at the Univ. of Chicago from ...

Karlskrona

(Encyclopedia)Karlskrona kärlskro͞oˈnä [key], city (1990 pop. 31,100), capital of Blekinge co., SE Sweden, on the Baltic Sea. It is a seaport and fishing center with a large modern port. The city has been the h...

Lucretius

(Encyclopedia)Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) lo͞okrēˈshəs [key], c.99 b.c.–c.55 b.c., Roman poet and philosopher. Little is known about his life. A chronicle of St. Jerome speaks of the loss of his reason ...

molecular weight

(Encyclopedia)molecular weight, weight of a molecule of a substance expressed in atomic mass units (amu). The molecular weight may be calculated from the molecular formula of the substance; it is the sum of the ato...

cleavage

(Encyclopedia)cleavage, tendency of many minerals to split along definite smooth planar surfaces determined by their crystal structure. The directions of these surfaces are related to weaknesses in the atomic struc...

Halden

(Encyclopedia)Halden hälˈdən [key], town, Østfold co., SE Norway, a port on the Iddefjord (an arm of th...

Mottelson, Benjamin Roy

(Encyclopedia)Mottelson, Benjamin Roy, 1926–, Danish physicist, b. Chicago, Ph.D. Harvard, 1950. Raised and educated in the United States, he moved to Denmark, where he began work as a nuclear physicist. Mottelso...

Uffizi

(Encyclopedia)Uffizi o͞of-fēˈtsē [key], palace in Florence, Italy, built in the 16th cent. by Giorgio Vasari for Cosimo I de' Medici as public offices. It houses the state archives of Tuscany and the Uffizi Gal...

L'Huillier, Anne

(Encyclopedia)Anne L'Huillier, 1958–, b. Paris, France, French-Swedish physicist, studied at Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, and Commissariat à l’Energ...

nucleon

(Encyclopedia)nucleon, term applying to both the proton and the neutron, the two constituents of atomic nuclei. The nucleon may be considered a single particle, of which the proton and the neutron are two different...