Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Shop

0-9

Doorman, Karel ... Dottore

Doorman, Karel: Dutch rear admiral who commanded a combined American, British, Dutch, and Australian (ABDA) naval force on a virtual suicide mission in World War II. Its purpose was to halt the ...
Doors, the: American band that, with a string of hits in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was the creative vehicle for singer Jim Morrison, one of rock music's mythic figures. The ...
doorstop: usually decorative and invariably heavy object used to prevent doors from swinging shut. Doorstops came into use about 1775 following the introduction of the rising butt, a type of door ...
dopamine: a nitrogen-containing organic compound formed as an intermediate compound from dihydroxyphenylalanine (dopa) during the metabolism of the amino acid tyrosine. It is the precursor of the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine. ...
dopant: any impurity deliberately added to a semiconductor for the purpose of modifying its electrical conductivity. The most commonly used elemental semiconductors are silicon and germanium, which form crystalline lattices in ...
doppelganger: (German: "double goer"), in German folklore, a wraith or apparition of a living person, as distinguished from a ghost. The concept of the existence of a spirit double, an exact ...
Doppler effect: the apparent difference between the frequency at which sound or light waves leave a source and that at which they reach an observer, caused by relative motion of the observer ...
Doppler, Christian: Austrian physicist who first described how the observed frequency of light and sound waves is affected by the relative motion of the source and the detector. This phenomenon became known ...
Dor: modern settlement and ancient port in northwestern Israel, on the Mediterranean coast, south of Haifa. Ancient Dor was a strategic site on the Via Maris, the historic road that ran ...
dorado: (Salminus maxillosus), powerful game fish of the characin family, Characidae, found in South American rivers. The dorado is golden, with red fins and with lengthwise rows of dots on its ...
Dorat, Jean: French humanist, a brilliant Hellenist, one of the poets of the Pleiade, and their mentor for many years.
Dorati, Antal: Hungarian-born American conductor notable for his promotion of 20th-century music, particularly that of Bela Bartok.
Dorchester: county, southern South Carolina, U.S. The Edisto River forms the southwestern boundary, and the county is also drained by the Ashley River. Dorchester county lies in the flat Coastal Plain, ...
Dorchester: county, southeastern Maryland, U.S., bounded by the Choptank River to the north, Delaware to the east, the Nanticoke River to the southeast, and Chesapeake Bay to the south and west. ...
Dorchester: town ("parish"), West Dorset district, administrative and historic county of Dorset, England, on the River Frome. Dorchester is the county town (seat) of Dorset.
Dorchester, Guy Carleton, 1st Baron: soldier-statesman who, as governor of Quebec before and during the American Revolutionary War, succeeded in reconciling the British and French and in repulsing the invasion attempts of Continental forces.
Dordogne River: river in southwestern France, rising in the Massif Central and flowing west for 293 mi (472 km) to Bec d'Ambes, north of Bordeaux, where it unites with the Garonne to ...
Dordrecht: gemeente (commune), Zuid-Holland provincie, southwestern Netherlands, at the divergence of the Merwede, Noord, Oude Maas (Old Meuse), and Dordtse Kil rivers. Founded in 1008, it was the residence of the ...
Dore, Gustave: French printmaker, one of the most prolific and successful book illustrators of the late 19th century, whose exuberant and bizarre fantasy created vast dreamlike scenes widely emulated by Romantic academicians.
Dorgan, Thomas Aloysius: American journalist, boxing authority, and cartoonist credited with inventing a variety of colourful American slang expressions.
Dorgon: temple name (Wade-Giles romanization) Ch'eng-tsung, canonized name (Wade-Giles) Huang-ti prince of the Manchu people of Manchuria who played a major part in founding the Ch'ing (Manchu) dynasty in China. He ...
Dorham, Kenny: black American jazz trumpeter, a pioneer of bebop noted for the beauty of his tone and for his lyricism.
Doria Family: leading family in the political, military, and economic life of Genoa, from the 12th century onward.
Doria, Andrea: Genoese statesman, condottiere (mercenary commander), and admiral who was the foremost naval leader of his time.
Doria, Giacomo: Italian naturalist and explorer who in 1867 founded the civic museum of natural history in Genoa and conducted important research in systematic zoology.
Dorian: any member of a major division of the ancient Greek people, distinguished by a well-marked dialect and by their subdivision, within all their communities, into the "tribes" (phylai) of Hylleis, ...
Dorian mode: in music, first of the eight medieval church modes. See church mode.
Doric dialect: a dialect of Ancient Greek that in Mycenaean times was spoken by seminomadic Greeks living around the Pindus Mountains. After the Dorian migrations near the end of the 2nd millennium ...
Doric order: one of the orders of classical architecture, characterized by a simple and austere column and capital. See order.
Dorion, Sir Antoine Aime: statesman and jurist, joint premier of the united province of Canada with George Brown in August 1858 and with John Sandfield Macdonald in 1863-64.
Doris: the alleged mother country of the Dorian conquerors of the Peloponnese. It was a small district in central Greece, lying between Mounts Oeta (modern Oiti) and Parnassus and consisting of ...
Dorking: town, Mole Valley district, administrative and historic county of Surrey, England, southwest of London. It is situated in the valley of the River Mole, between the escarpment of the chalk ...
dormancy: a state of reduced metabolic activity adopted by many organisms under conditions of environmental stress or, often, as in winter, when such stressful conditions are likely to appear. See diapause; ...
dormancy: state of reduced metabolic activity adopted by many organisms under conditions of environmental stress or, often, as in winter, when such stressful conditions are likely to appear.
dormer: in architecture, a vertical window that projects from a sloping roof and usually illuminates a bedroom. The term derives from the Latin dormitorium, "sleeping room." Dormers are set either on ...
dormouse: any of 27 species of small-bodied Eurasian, Japanese, and African rodents. The largest, weighing up to 180 grams (6.3 ounces), is the fat, or edible, dormouse (Myoxus glis) of Europe ...
Dornberger, Walter Robert: engineer who directed construction of the German V-2 rocket during World War II.
Dornbirn: town, Vorarlberg Bundesland (federal state), western Austria, on the Dornbirner Stream, in the Rhine River valley at the foot of the Bregenzer Forest, just south of Bregenz. First mentioned as ...
Dorner, Isaak August: German Protestant theologian who sought to interpret Kantian and post-Kantian thought in terms of traditional Lutheran doctrine. The best known of the English translations of his many works is History ...
Dornier, Claudius: English Claude Dornier pioneer German aircraft designer and builder.
Dorotheus: jurist, one of the principal codifiers of Roman law under the emperor Justinian I.
Dorpfeld, Friedrich Wilhelm: German educator who adapted Johann Friedrich Herbart's ideas to elementary school use and emphasized the social aspects of traditional school subjects.
Dorpfeld, Wilhelm: German archaeologist and authority on Greek architecture who excavated the Mycenaean palace at Tiryns (modern Tirins, Greece) and continued the excavation of the famed German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann at Hisarlik, ...
Dorr, Julia Caroline Ripley: American novelist and poet, notable for her novels that portrayed young women lifting themselves from poverty through education and persistence.
Dorr, Thomas Wilson: American lawyer and constitutional reformer in Rhode Island who led the Dorr Rebellion (also known as Dorr's Rebellion) in 1842.
Dorset: administrative, geographic, and historic county of southwestern England, bordered by the English Channel (south) and the counties of Devon (west), Hampshire (east), Somerset, and Wiltshire (both north). The administrative, geographic, ...
Dorset culture: prehistoric culture of Greenland (Greenlandic: Kalaallit Nunaat) and the Canadian eastern Arctic as far south as Newfoundland between approximately 800 BC and AD 1300. Its name comes from excavations made ...
Dorsey, George A.: early U.S. ethnographer of North American Indians, especially the Mandan tribe. His investigations of the Plains Indians included early population accounts of the area. He is best known for his ...
Dorsey, James Owen: American ethnologist known principally for his linguistic and ethnographic studies of the Siouan Indians.
Dorsey, Jimmy; and Dorsey, Tommy: brothers who separately and together were leaders of large popular dance orchestras in the United States.
Dorsey, Thomas Andrew: American songwriter, singer, and pianist whose many up-tempo blues arrangements of gospel music hymns earned him the title of "Father of Gospel Music."
Dorst, Tankred: German author whose experiments with theatrical forms, translations, and political plays and novels marked him as an original.
Dorsten: city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), western Germany. It lies on the Lippe River and the Wesel-Datteln Canal. A village in Roman times, Dorsten was chartered by the ...
Dort, Synod of: assembly of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands that met at Dort (in full Dordrecht) from Nov. 13, 1618, to May 9, 1619. The synod tried to settle disputes concerning ...
Dortmund: city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), western Germany. Located at the southern terminus of the Dortmund-Ems Canal, it has extensive port installations. First mentioned as Throtmanni in 885, ...
Dortmund-Ems Canal: important commercial canal in western Germany linking the Ruhr industrial area with the North Sea near Emden. It extends from Dortmund (south) to the junction with the Rhein-Herne Canal; floating ...
Dortyol: town, southern Turkey, at the head of the Gulf of Iskenderun. The town's importance lies in its function as a terminal where Mediterranean tankers can be loaded with oil transported ...
Dorval: city, Montreal region, southern Quebec province, Canada, on Ile de Montreal (Montreal Island). It is a southwestern suburb of Montreal city facing Lac Saint-Louis, an extension of the St. Lawrence ...
dory: small boat with pointed ends and high, flaring sides. A dory may be up to 22 feet (7 m) long and commonly has a narrow, V-shaped stern and a narrow, ...
dory: any of several marine fishes of the family Zeidae (order Zeiformes), found worldwide in moderately deep waters. The members of the family are large-mouthed fish, deep-bodied but thin from side ...
Dos Hermanas: town, Seville province, in the autonomous community (region) of Andalusia, southern Spain. It lies southeast of Seville city between the Guadaira and Guadalquivir rivers. The town was founded by Ferdinand ...
Dos Passos, John: American writer, one of the major novelists of the post-World War I "lost generation," whose reputation as a social historian and as a radical critic of the quality of American ...
Dos Pilas: ancient capital of the Petexbatun kingdom of the Maya, situated near the Salinas River in what is now Peten, west-central Guatemala, about 5 miles (8 km) east of the border ...
dos Santos, Jose: politician who became president of Angola in 1979.
Dosho: Japanese priest who helped introduce Buddhism into his country.
dosimeter: instrument that measures exposure to ionizing radiation over a given period. There are three types of dosimeters worn by persons who work with or near sources of radiation. The film ...
Dositheos: patriarch of Jerusalem, an important church politician and theologian of the Greek church who staunchly supported Eastern orthodoxy over Roman Catholicism. Ordained deacon in 1652, he became archdeacon of Jerusalem ...
Dosso: town, southwestern Niger, situated about 80 miles (130 km) southeast of Niger's capital, Niamey. Dosso is the traditional headquarters of the Zerma people, who are sedentary farmers. The town is ...
Dosso Dossi: late Italian Renaissance painter, the leader of the Ferrarese school in the 16th century. He is first recorded in 1512, in Mantua, but by then he must have been in ...
Dost Mohammad Khan: ruler of Afghanistan (1826-63) and founder of the Barakzay dynasty, who maintained Afghan independence during a time when the nation was a focus of political struggles between Great Britain and ...
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor: Russian novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart, together with his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction.
dotaku: thin, elongated bell-shaped bronze forms, evidence of a short-lived bronze culture, localized in the centre of Japan, from the middle Yayoi period (c. 250 BC-c. AD 250) into the Tumulus ...
Dothan: city, Houston and Dale counties, seat (1903) of Houston county, southeastern Alabama, U.S., about 90 miles (145 km) southeast of Montgomery. Originally settled as Poplar Head in the early 1800s, ...
Dotremont, Christian: Belgian poet and energetic cultural figure who is probably best known as one of the founders of the experimental art group, COBRA.
dotterel: any of several species of birds of the plover family, Charadriidae (order Charadriiformes), especially the Eurasian dotterel (Eudromias morinellus). The Eurasian dotterel is mottled brown above, with a broad, white ...
Dottore: stock character of the Italian theatrical form known as the commedia dell'arte, who was a loquacious caricature of pedantic learning. The Dottore's professional affiliation was imprecise. He was at times ...