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Gombrich, E. H.

(Encyclopedia)Gombrich, E. H. (Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich), 1909–2001, British art historian and scholar, b. Vienna, grad. Univ. of Vienna (1933). From a culturally prominent Austrian-Jewish family, he fled German...

power, in physics

(Encyclopedia)power, in physics, time rate of doing work or of producing or expending energy. The unit of power based on the English units of measurement is the horsepower, devised for describing mechanical power b...

ebony

(Encyclopedia)ebony, common name for members of the Ebenaceae, a family of trees and shrubs widely distributed in warmer climates and in the tropics. The principal genus, Diospyros, includes both ebony and persimmo...

corona, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)corona, luminous envelope surrounding the sun, outside the chromosphere. Its density is less than one billionth that of the earth's atmosphere. The corona is visible only at the time of totality durin...

Cheever, John

(Encyclopedia)Cheever, John, 1912–82, American author, b. Quincy, Mass. His expulsion from Thayer Academy was the subject of his first short story, published by the New Republic when he was 17. Many of his subseq...

Clermont-Ferrand

(Encyclopedia)Clermont-Ferrand klĕrmôNˈ-fĕräNˈ [key], city, capital of Puy-de-Dôme dept., central France, in ...

fisher

(Encyclopedia)fisher, name of a large North American marten, Martes pennanti. This carnivorous, largely arboreal mammal is found in hardwood forests of Canada, the extreme N United States, and mountain ranges of th...

Fossey, Dian

(Encyclopedia)Fossey, Dian fôˈsē, fŏsˈē [key], 1932–85, American zoologist, b. San Francisco, who lived and worked with the mountain gorillas of central Africa, adding immeasurably to the understanding of t...

Hauser, Kaspar

(Encyclopedia)Hauser, Kaspar käsˈpär houˈzər [key], 1812?–1833, mysterious German foundling. He appeared in Nuremberg in 1828 in a state of semi-idiocy, producing dubious documents and giving an incoherent a...

Gorey, Edward

(Encyclopedia)Gorey, Edward, 1925–2000, American illustrator and writer, b. Chicago, grad. Harvard, 1950. He lived and worked in New York City and Cape Cod until 1986 when he moved permanently to the Cape. Gorey ...