The Physical Sciences
Physics: The study of matter and energy and the interactions between them. Physicists study such subjects as gravity, light, and time. Albert Einstein, a famous physicist,…
Source: U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Geological Survey About 550 volcanoes have erupted on Earth's surface since recorded history; about 60 are active each…
Leonardo da Vinci is best remembered as the painter of the Mona Lisa (1503-1506) and the mural The Last Supper (1495). Leonardo is equally famous for his astonishing multiplicity of talents: he…
Dinosaur communities were separated by both time and geography. The “age of dinosaurs” (the Mesozoic Era) included three consecutive geologic time periods (the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous…
Name at birth: James Lewis MacieJames Smithson was an English chemist and mineralogist who left his fortune to the United States to found what became the Smithsonian Institution. Smithson was born…
(Encyclopedia) Dawkins, Sir William Boyd, 1837–1929, English geologist and archaeologist. He was a member (1861–69) of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, curator (1870–90) of the Manchester…
(Encyclopedia) Hopkins, William, 1793–1866, English geologist. Hopkins studied mathematics at Cambridge, and then supported himself as a private mathematics tutor. Many of England's best…
(Encyclopedia) Notre Dame, University ofNotre Dame, University ofnōˈtər dām, nōˈtrə [key], at Notre Dame, Ind., near South Bend; Roman Catholic; coeducational; est. and opened 1842, chartered 1844.…
(Encyclopedia) Brigham, Albert Perry, 1855–1932, American geographer, b. Perry, N.Y., grad. Colgate Univ., 1879, M. A. Harvard, 1892. After nine years in the Baptist ministry (1882–91) he became…
John McPhee wrote non-fiction essays for The New Yorker and published books on a variety of subjects, from oranges and rivers to tennis and nuclear engineering. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 for…
