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bilberry: (Vaccinium myrtillus), low-growing deciduous shrub belonging to the family Ericaceae. It is found in woods and on heaths, chiefly in hilly districts of Great Britain, northern Europe, and Asia. The ...
Bilbo, Theodore G.: American politician and Democratic senator from Mississippi (1935-47), best known for his racist and demagogic rhetoric.
Bildad: in the Old Testament, one of the three principal comforters of Job. Bildad is introduced (Job 2:11) as a Shuhite, probably a member of a nomadic tribe dwelling in southeastern ...
Bilderberg Conference: annual three-day conference attended by about 100 of Europe's and North America's most influential bankers, economists, politicians, and government officials. The conference, held in a different Western country each year, ...
Bilderdijk, Willem: Dutch poet who had considerable influence not only on the poetry but also on the intellectual and social life of the Netherlands.
Bildungsroman: (German: "novel of formative education"), class of novel in German literature that deals with the formative years of an individual.
bile: greenish yellow secretion that is produced in the liver and passed to the gallbladder for concentration, storage, or transport into the first region of the small intestine, the duodenum. Its ...
Bilecik: city, northwestern Turkey. Bilecik lies along the Karasu River, a tributary of the Sakarya River. It was captured from the Byzantines by the Ottoman ruler Osman I in 1298. The ...
Bilfinger, Georg Bernhard: German philosopher, mathematician, statesman, and author of treatises in astronomy, physics, botany, and theology. He is best known for his Leibniz-Wolffian philosophy, a term he coined to refer to his ...
Bilge: khagan, or great khan, of Mongolia from 716 until his death. His name literally translates as "Wise Emperor."
Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyy: city, Odessa oblast (province), southernmost Ukraine. It lies on the southwestern shore of the broad, shallow Dniester River estuary. In the 6th century BC, Greeks from Miletus established the colony ...
bilin: any biological pigment (biochrome) belonging to a series of yellow, green, red, or brown nonmetallic compounds that are formed as a metabolic product of certain porphyrins. In addition to their ...
bilirubin: a brownish yellow pigment of bile, secreted by the liver in vertebrates, which gives to solid waste products (feces) their characteristic colour. It is produced in bone marrow cells and ...
Bill, Max: Swiss graphic artist, industrial designer, architect, sculptor, and painter, primarily important for his sophisticated, disciplined advertising designs.
Billaud-Varenne, Jean-Nicolas: lawyer and pamphleteer, a member of the Committee of Public Safety that ruled Revolutionary France during the period of the Jacobin dictatorship (1793-94).
billbergia: any member of a genus (Billbergia) of evergreen epiphytes of the pineapple family (Bromeliaceae), containing more than 50 South American species. Several species are grown indoors as decorative plants for ...
billbug: any of certain beetles of the insect family Curculionidae (order Coleoptera). Billbugs are stout-bodied beetles with short snouts; they range up to 5 cm (2 inches) in length. Some (e.g., ...
Billetdoux, Francois: French playwright whose works, linked with the avant-garde theatre, examined human relationships and found them doomed to failure.
billfish: any of several long-jawed fishes, including the gar (q.v.).
billiards: any of various games played on a rectangular table with a designated number of small balls and a long stick called a cue. The table and the cushioned rail bordering ...
Billings: city, seat (1883) of Yellowstone county, south-central Montana, U.S., on the Yellowstone River 3,119 feet (951 metres) above sea level. Billings lies at the base of the Rimrock Mountains in ...
Billings, John Shaw: American surgeon and librarian whose organization of U.S. medical institutions played a central role in the modernization of hospital care and the maintenance of public health.
Billings, Josh: American humorist whose philosophical comments in plain language were widely popular after the American Civil War through his newspaper pieces, books, and comic lectures. He employed the misspellings, fractured grammar, ...
Billings, William: foremost composer of the early American primitive style, whose works have become an integral part of the American folk tradition. A tanner by trade, he was self-taught in music. Among ...
Billingsgate: former London market (closed 1982). It was situated in the City of London at the north end of London Bridge beside The Monument, which commemorates the outbreak of the Great ...
Billiton: island and kabupaten (regency), Bangka-Belitung propinsi (province), Indonesia. With 135 associated smaller islands, it lies between the South China and Java seas, southwest of ...
Billroth, Theodor: Viennese surgeon, generally considered to be the founder of modern abdominal surgery.
Billung Dynasty: the primary ruling dynasty in Saxony in the 10th and 11th centuries. It was founded by Hermann Billung, who in 936 received from the German king (and future emperor) Otto ...
Billy the Kid: one of the most notorious gunfighters of the American West, reputed to have killed at least 27 men before being gunned down at about age 21.
Biloxi: city, coseat (with nearby Gulfport) of Harrison county, southern Mississippi, U.S. The city lies on a narrow Gulf Coast peninsula between the Gulf of Mexico (south) and Back Bay of ...
Bilston enamelware: enameled products made in Bilston, Eng., which was one of the most prolific centres of enameling in the 18th century. A large number of enamelers worked in Bilston decorating small ...
bimah: (from Arabic al-minbar, "platform"), in Jewish synagogues, a raised platform with a reading desk from which, in the Ashkenazi (German) ritual, the Torah and Haftarah (a reading from the prophets) ...
Bimbisara: one of the early kings of the Indian kingdom of Magadha. His expansion of the kingdom, especially his annexation of the kingdom of Anga to the east, is considered to ...
bimetallism: monetary standard or system based upon the use of two metals, traditionally gold and silver, rather than one (monometallism). The typical 19th-century bimetallic system defined a nation's monetary unit by ...
Bimini Islands: string of islands, northwestern Bahamas. They extend 40 miles (65 km) north to south and lie about 50 miles (80 km) east of the Florida coast of the United States ...
bin Laden, Osama: mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks against the United States and other Western powers, including the 1993 bombing of New York City's World Trade Center, the 2000 suicide bombing of the ...
binary form: in music, the structural pattern of many songs and instrumental pieces, primarily from the 17th to the 19th century, characterized by two complementary, related sections of more or less equal ...
binary number system: in mathematics, positional numeral system employing 2 as the base and so requiring only two different symbols for its digits, 0 and 1, instead of the usual 10 different symbols ...
binary star: pair of stars in orbit around their common centre of gravity. A high proportion, perhaps one-half, of all stars in the Milky Way Galaxy are binaries or members of more ...
Binche: town, Hainaut province, Belgium. It lies 9 miles (15 km) southeast of Mons. Situated on a hill, Binche remains encircled by fortifications built in the 12th century ...
Binchois, Gilles: Flemish composer of church music and of secular chansons that were among the finest of their genre, being notable for their elegance of line and grave sweetness of expression.
Binchy, Maeve: Irish journalist and author of best-selling novels and short stories about small-town Irish life. Noted as a superb storyteller, Binchy examined her characters and their relationships with wit and great ...
binder: machine for cutting grain and binding it into bundles, once widely used to cut small grain such as wheat. The first patent was issued on a self-tie binder in 1850. ...
binding energy: amount of energy required to separate a particle from a system of particles or to disperse all the particles of the system. Binding energy is especially applicable to subatomic particles ...
bindweed: plants of the closely related genera Convolvulus and Calystegia, mostly twining, often weedy, and producing handsome white, pink, or blue, funnel-shaped flowers. Bellbine, or greater bindweed (Calystegia sepium), native in ...
Binet, Alfred: French psychologist who played a dominant role in the development of experimental psychology in France and who made fundamental contributions to the measurement of intelligence.
Bing, Sir Rudolph: British operatic impresario who oversaw the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for 22 years (1950-72) as general manager.
Bingen: city, Rhineland-Palatinate Land (state), southwestern Germany. Bingen is a port at the confluence of the Rhine and Nahe rivers, near the whirlpool known as Binger Loch. It ...
Bingerville: town, southeastern Cote d'Ivoire, on the Ebrie Lagoon. Named for Captain Louis-Gustave Binger, first governor of the French Ivory Coast colony, the town was the colonial capital from 1900 to ...
Bingham, Amelia: American actress who not only achieved great popularity as a performer but also became perhaps the country's first successful actress-producer.
Bingham, Caleb: American educator, textbook author, and bookseller during the four decades following the American Revolution.
Bingham, George Caleb: American frontier painter noted for his landscapes, portraits, and especially for his representations of Midwestern river life.
Bingham, Hiram: American archaeologist and politician who in 1911 discovered Machu Picchu in a remote part of the Peruvian Andes. His work was a catalyst for archaeological study in the Andes and ...
Binghamton: city, seat (1806) of Broome county, south-central New York, U.S. It lies at the confluence of the Chenango and Susquehanna rivers, near the Pennsylvania border, 75 miles (121 km) south ...
bingo: game of chance using cards on which there is a grid of numbers, a row of which constitute a win when they have been chosen at random. Bingo is one ...
Bingol: city in eastern Turkey, lying along the Goniksuyu, a tributary of the Murat River. It is a market for grain, livestock, and livestock products of the area. The city takes ...
Bingxin: Chinese writer of gentle, melancholy poems, stories, and essays that enjoyed great popularity.
Binkis, Kazys: poet who led the "Four Winds" literary movement, which introduced Futurism into Lithuania.
Binney, Horace: American lawyer and politician who established the legality of charitable trusts in the United States.
Binnig, Gerd: German-born physicist who shared with Heinrich Rohrer (q.v.) half of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Physics for their invention of the scanning tunneling microscope. (Ernst Ruska won the other half ...
Binnya Dala: last king (reigned 1747-57) of Pegu in southern Myanmar (Burma), whose independence from the northern Burmans was revived briefly between 1740 and 1757.
binocular: optical instrument, usually handheld, for providing a magnified stereoscopic view of distant objects, consisting of two similar telescopes, one for each eye, mounted on a single frame. A single thumbwheel ...
binomial distribution: in statistics, a common distribution function for discrete processes in which a fixed probability prevails for each independently generated value.
binomial theorem: statement that, for any positive integer n, the nth power of the sum of two numbers a and b may be expressed as the sum of n + 1 terms ...
Binswanger, Ludwig: Swiss psychiatrist and writer who applied the principles of existential phenomenology, especially as expressed by Martin Heidegger, to psychotherapy. Diagnosing certain psychic abnormalities (e.g., elation fixation, eccentricity, and mannerism) to ...
binturong: (Arctictis binturong), catlike carnivore of the civet family (Viverridae), found in dense forests of southern Asia, Indonesia, and Malaysia. It has long, shaggy hair, tufted ears, and a long, bushy, ...
Binyon, Laurence: English poet, dramatist, and art historian, a pioneer in the European study of Far Eastern painting.
Bio-Bio: region, central Chile, bordering Argentina to the east and fronting the Pacific Ocean to the west. It was given its present boundaries in 1974. Its area of 14,262 square miles ...
Bio-Bio River: river in south-central Chile. It rises in the Andes on Chile's eastern border and flows generally northwestward to enter the Gulf of Arauco on the Pacific Ocean near Concepcion after ...
bioceramics: ceramic products or components employed in medical and dental applications, mainly as implants and replacements. This article briefly describes the principal ceramic materials and surveys the uses to which they ...
biochemical oxygen demand: the amount of oxygen used by microorganisms in the process of breaking down organic matter in water. The more organic matter there is (e.g., in sewage), the greater the number ...
biochemistry: the field of science concerned with the chemical substances and processes that occur in plants, animals, and microorganisms. Specifically, it involves the quantitative determination and structural analysis of the organic ...
biochemistry: study of the chemical substances and processes that occur in plants, animals, and microorganisms and of the changes they undergo during development and life. It deals with the chemistry of ...
bioclimatology: branch of climatology that deals with the effects of the physical environment on living organisms over an extended period of time. Although Hippocrates touched on these matters 2,000 years ago ...
bioelectricity: electric potentials and currents produced by or occurring within living organisms. Bioelectric potentials are generated by a variety of biological processes and generally range in strength from one to a ...
bioengineering: the application of engineering knowledge to the fields of medicine and biology. The bioengineer must be well grounded in biology and have engineering knowledge that is broad, drawing upon electrical, ...