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beryl ... Betti, Enrico

beryl: mineral composed of beryllium aluminum silicate, Be₃Al₂(SiO₃)₆, a commercial source of beryllium. It has long been of interest because several varieties are valued as gemstones. These are aquamarine (pale blue-green); ...
berylliosis: systemic industrial disease caused by poisoning with beryllium, usually involving the lungs but occasionally affecting only the skin. There are two forms: an acute illness occurring most frequently in workers ...
beryllium: chemical element, one of the alkaline-earth metals of Group IIa of the periodic table, used in metallurgy as a hardening agent and in many space and nuclear applications. Beryllium was ...
Berzelius, Jons Jacob: one of the founders of modern chemistry. He is especially noted for his determination of atomic weights, the development of modern chemical symbols, his electrochemical theory, the discovery and isolation ...
Berzsenyi, Daniel: poet who first successfully introduced classical metres and themes in Hungarian poetry.
Bes: a minor god of ancient Egypt, represented as a dwarf with large head, goggle eyes, protruding tongue, bowlegs, bushy tail, and usually a crown of feathers. The name Bes is ...
Besancon: city, capital of Doubs departement, Franche-Comte region, eastern France. It lies astride a horseshoe meander of the Doubs River, 45 miles (75 km) east of Dijon. It early became the ...
Besant, Annie: nee Wood British social reformer, sometime Fabian socialist, theosophist, and Indian independence leader.
Besant, Sir Walter: English novelist and philanthropist, whose best work describing social evils in London's East End helped set in motion movements to aid the poor.
Beskid Mountains: discontinuous series of forested mountain ranges lying in the eastern Czech Republic, northwestern Slovakia, and southern Poland. The Czech sections at the western end of the Carpathian Mountains lie south ...
bess beetle: (family Passalidae), any of approximately 800 species of insects found mainly in the tropics but also in North America (e.g., Passalus cornutus) and characterized by their large size, ranging between ...
Bessa Luis, Maria Agustina: novelist and short-story writer influenced by Marcel Proust and Franz Kafka whose fiction diverged from the predominantly neorealistic regionalism of mid-20th-century Portuguese literature to incorporate elements of surrealism.
Bessa Victor, Geraldo: Angolan lyric poet whose work expresses the dream of racial harmony and the need to recapture the openness and purity of childhood.
Bessarabia: region in eastern Europe that passed successively, from the 15th to 20th century, to Moldavia, the Ottoman Empire, Russia, Romania, the Soviet Union, and Ukraine and Moldova. It is bounded ...
Bessarion: Byzantine humanist and theologian, later a Roman cardinal, and a major contributor to the revival of letters in the 15th century.
Bessel function: any of a set of mathematical functions systematically derived around 1817 by the German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel during an investigation of solutions of one of Kepler's equations of planetary ...
Bessel, Friedrich Wilhelm: German astronomer whose measurements of positions for about 50,000 stars allowed the first accurate determination of interstellar distances; he was the first to measure the distance of a star other ...
Bessemer: city, Jefferson county, north-central Alabama, U.S., about 15 miles (25 km) southwest of downtown Birmingham in the foothills of the southern Appalachian Mountains. Named for inventor and engineer Sir Henry ...
Bessemer process: the first method discovered for mass-producing steel. Though named after Sir Henry Bessemer of England, the process evolved from the contributions of many investigators before it could be used on ...
Bessemer, Sir Henry: inventor and engineer who developed the first process for manufacturing steel inexpensively (1856), leading to the development of the Bessemer converter. He was knighted in 1879.
Besserungsstuck: a genre of play popular in Vienna in the early 19th century. A form of Volksstuck, a play written in local dialect for popular audiences, the Besserungsstuck was concerned with ...
Bessey, Charles E.: botanist who introduced to the United States the systematic study of plant morphology and the experimental laboratory for botanical instruction on the college level. His arrangement of angiosperm (flowering plant) ...
Bessieres, Jean-Baptiste, duke d'Istrie: French soldier and, as one of Napoleon's marshals, commander of the imperial guard after 1804. His appointment as marshal signaled Napoleon's intention to develop the imperial guard.
Besson, Jacques: engineer whose improvements in the lathe were of great importance in the development of the machine-tool industry and of scientific instrumentation.
Bessus: Achaemenid satrap (governor) of Bactria and Sogdiana under King Darius III of Persia. In 330, after Alexander the Great had defeated Darius in several major battles, Bessus murdered Darius and ...
Best Friend of Charleston: first steam locomotive built in the United States for regular railway service. A vertical boiler mounted on a four-wheel carriage, the Best Friend was built by the West Point Foundry ...
best of all possible worlds: in the philosophy of the 17th- and 18th-century philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the present world of monads (infinitesimal psychophysical entities) coordinated in preestablished harmony. Among all possible worlds that God ...
Best, Charles H.: physiologist who, with Sir Frederick Banting, was the first to obtain (1921) a pancreatic extract of insulin in a form that controlled diabetes in dogs. The successful use of insulin ...
best-seller: book that, for a time, leads all others of its kind in sales, a designation that serves as an index of popular literary taste and judgment. Bookman, an American magazine ...
Bester, Alfred: innovative American writer of science fiction whose output, though small, was highly influential.
bestiary: literary genre in the European Middle Ages consisting of a collection of stories, each based on a description of certain qualities of an animal, plant, or even stone. The stories ...
Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Aleksey Petrovich, Count: (Graf) diplomat and statesman who controlled Russia's foreign affairs during the reign of the empress Elizabeth.
Bet Alfa: ancient site in northeastern Israel, noted for the remains of a synagogue (founded 6th century AD) that was discovered in 1928 by kibbutz workers digging drainage ditches. The kibbutz was ...
bet din: Jewish tribunal empowered to adjudicate cases involving criminal, civil, or religious law. The history of such institutions goes back to the time the 12 tribes of Israel appointed judges and ...
Bet She'an: town, northeastern Israel, principal settlement in the low 'Emeq Bet She'an ('emeq, "valley"), site of one of the oldest inhabited cities of ancient Palestine. It is about 394 ft (120 ...
Bet She'arim: agricultural cooperative settlement (moshav) and archaeological site in northern Israel, near the western end of the Plain of Esdraelon. Ancient Bet She'arim (Hebrew: House [of the] Gates), about 3 mi ...
Beta Centauri: 11th brightest star in the night sky, a visual binary star with apparent magnitude of 0.61. It is the second brightest star (after Alpha Centauri) in the southern constellation Centaurus ...
beta decay: any of three processes of radioactive disintegration by which some unstable atomic nuclei spontaneously dissipate excess energy and undergo a change of one unit of positive charge without any change ...
Beta Lyrae: eclipsing binary star, the two component stars of which are so close together that they are greatly distorted by their mutual attraction; they exchange material and share a common atmosphere. ...
beta particle: electron (unit negative charge) or positron (unit positive charge) spontaneously emitted by certain unstable atomic nuclei in the radioactive disintegration process of beta decay (q.v.).
beta-aminoisobutyric acid excretion: a metabolic process under simple genetic control in human beings and the higher primates, the significance of which is not currently fully understood. Beta-aminoisobutyric acid (BAIB), an amino acid end ...
beta-blocker: any of a group of synthetic drugs used in the treatment of a wide range of diseases and conditions of the sympathetic nervous system. Stimulation by epinephrine of beta-adrenoreceptors, which ...
Betancourt, Romulo: left-wing, anti-Communist politician who, as president of Venezuela, pursued policies of agrarian reform, industrial development, and popular participation in government.
betatron: a type of particle accelerator that uses the electric field induced by a varying magnetic field to accelerate electrons (beta particles) to high speeds in a circular orbit. The first ...
betel: either of two different plants whose fruit is used in combination for chewing, or masticatory, purposes throughout wide areas of southern Asia and the East Indies. Betel chewing is a ...
Betelgeuse: brightest star in the constellation Orion, marking the eastern shoulder of the hunter. Its name is derived from the Arabic word bat al-dshauza, which means "the giant's shoulder." Betelgeuse has ...
Beth Yerah: ancient fortified settlement located at the southern tip of the Sea of Galilee. Beth Yerah was settled in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3100-2300 BC) and was also populated from ...
Bethanie: village, southern Namibia. Bethanie is situated at the site of a spring in an arid region; the region edges into the extremely arid Namib Desert on the west. It lies ...
Bethany: city, Oklahoma county, central Oklahoma, U.S., immediately west of Oklahoma City. It was established in 1909 as a religious colony centred on Southern Nazarene University, which was established as Oklahoma ...
Bethany: small village and biblical site on the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem. It was under Jordanian control from 1949 to 1967. After the Six-Day War ...
Bethe, Hans: German-born American theoretical physicist who helped to shape classical physics into quantum physics and increased the understanding of the atomic processes responsible for the properties of matter and of the ...
Bethel: ancient city of Palestine, located just north of Jerusalem. Originally called Luz and in modern times Baytin, Bethel was important in Old Testament times and was frequently associated with Abraham ...
Bethencourt, Jean de: Norman-French explorer, known as the conqueror of the Canary Islands.
Bethesda-Chevy Chase: northwestern suburban area of Washington, D.C., in Montgomery county, Maryland, U.S. It is not an incorporated entity but a group of communities (Bethesda and several associated with Chevy Chase) that ...
Bethlehem: town in ancient Judah, central Palestine. It is situated in the Judaean Hills, 5 miles (8 km) south of Jerusalem. Bethlehem was the site of the nativity of Jesus Christ ...
Bethlehem: town, northeastern Free State province, South Africa, located near the northernmost point of Lesotho, at an elevation of 5,368 feet (1,636 m). Founded in 1860, it was named Bethlehem ("House ...
Bethlehem: city, Northampton and Lehigh counties, eastern Pennsylvania, U.S. It lies on both sides of the Lehigh River and with Allentown and Easton forms an urban industrial complex. Founded in 1741 ...
Bethlehem Steel Corporation: American corporation first incorporated on Dec. 10, 1904, for the purpose of consolidating Bethlehem Steel Company (of Pennsylvania), the Union Iron Works (with shipbuilding facilities in San Francisco), and a ...
Bethlehem, Star of: celestial phenomenon mentioned in the Gospel According to Matthew as leading "wise men from the East" to the birthplace of Jesus Christ. Natural events that might well have been considered ...
Bethlen, Gabor: in full Gabor Iktari Bethlen, German Gabriel Bethlen Von Iktar Calvinist prince of Transylvania and briefly titular king of Hungary (August 1620 to December 1621), in opposition to the Catholic ...
Bethlen, Istvan, Count: (Grof) statesman and Hungarian prime minister from 1921 to 1931, who maintained the old order in Hungary after World War I.
Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von: German imperial chancellor before and during World War I who possessed talents for administration but not for governing.
Bethune: town, Pas-de-Calais departement, Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, northern France, at the confluence of the Lawe River and the Aire Canal, southwest of Lille. Founded in the 12th century, Bethune was an independent ...
Bethune, Louise Blanchard: first professional woman architect in the United States.
Bethune, Mary McLeod: American educator who was active nationally in African American affairs and was a special adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the problems of minority groups.
Beti, Mongo: Cameroonian novelist and political essayist.
Betjeman, Sir John: British poet known for his nostalgia for the near past, his exact sense of place, and his precise rendering of social nuance, which made him widely read in England at ...
Betpaqdala: desert in eastern Kazakstan, situated west of Lake Balqash. It has an area of about 29,000 square miles (75,000 square km) and an average elevation of 1,000-1,150 feet (300-350 m). ...
betrothal: promise or engagement between a man and a woman that they will be married. In societies in which premarital sexual relations are condoned or in which consensual union is common, ...
Betsileo: a Malagasy people living in the central highlands of south-central Madagascar. They speak a dialect of Malagasy, the West Austronesian language that is common to all Malagasy peoples. River valleys ...
Betsimisaraka: a Malagasy people living along the east-central and northeastern coast of Madagascar. The Betsimisaraka speak a dialect of Malagasy, the West Austronesian language that is common to all Malagasy peoples. ...
Bettelheim, Bruno: Austrian-born American psychologist known for his work in treating and educating emotionally disturbed children.
Better Business Bureau: any of several American and Canadian organizations formed to protect consumers against unfair, misleading, or fraudulent advertising and selling practices.
Betterton, Thomas: leading English actor of the Restoration and author of several popular adaptations.
Betterton-Kroll process: method widely used for removing bismuth from lead by adding calcium and magnesium to a molten lead-bismuth bath. Compounds are formed with bismuth that have higher melting points and lower ...
Betti, Enrico: mathematician who wrote a pioneering memoir on topology, the study of surfaces and higher-dimensional spaces, and wrote one of the first rigorous expositions of the theory of equations developed by ...