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silicon carbide

(Encyclopedia)silicon carbide, chemical compound, SiC, that forms extremely hard, dark, iridescent crystals that are insoluble in water and other common solvents. Widely used as an abrasive, it is marketed under su...

Watson, Thomas John, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Watson, Thomas John, Jr., 1914–93, American industrialist, b. Dayton, Ohio. The son of Thomas John Watson, Sr., the founder of the International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), he joined the family b...

Bloch, Felix

(Encyclopedia)Bloch, Felix, 1905–83, American physicist, b. Zürich, Switzerland, Ph.D. Univ. of Leipzig, Germany, 1928. He was a professor at Stanford from 1934 until his retirement in 1971. Bloch and Edward Pur...

Noda, Yoshihiko

(Encyclopedia)Noda, Yoshihiko, 1957–, Japanese political leader, prime minister of Japan, (2011–12), b. Funabashi, studied Waseda Univ. (grad. 1980) and Matsushita Institute of Government and Management. Noda b...

Area 51

(Encyclopedia)Area 51, name for a U.S. military site, S Nev., c.80 mi (130 km) NNW of Las Vegas. Shrouded in secrecy since the mid-20th cent., it is located within the U.S. Air Force's enormous Nevada Test and Trai...

Saint-Étienne

(Encyclopedia)Saint-Étienne săNtātyĕnˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 201,569), capital of Loire dept., SE France, in the Massif Central. The metropolitan region occupies much of what was once a major coal-mining and ...

Connecticut, river, United States

(Encyclopedia)Connecticut, longest river in New England, 407 mi (655 km) long, rising in the Connecticut Lakes, N N.H., near the Quebec border, and flowing S along the Vt.-N.H. line, then across Mass. and Conn. to ...

Coffin, William Sloane, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Coffin, William Sloane, Jr., 1924–2006, American Protestant social activist, b. New York City, nephew of Henry Sloane Coffin. Strongly influenced by the social philosophy of Reinhold Niebuhr, Coffin...

de Gennes, Pierre-Gilles

(Encyclopedia)de Gennes, Pierre-Gilles, 1932–2007, French physicist, Ph.D. Center for Nuclear Studies at Saclay, France, 1958. He was a professor at the Univ. of Paris, Orsay, from 1961 to 1971, when he joined th...

Fitch, Val Logsdon

(Encyclopedia)Fitch, Val Logsdon, 1923–2015, American nuclear physicist, b. Merriman, Neb., Ph.D. Columbia, 1954. During World War II Fitch was drafted into the army and worked on the detonator for the atomic bom...