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Klug, Aaron ... Kobayashi Kiyochika

Klug, Aaron: British chemist who was awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his investigations of the three-dimensional structure of viruses and other particles that are combinations of nucleic acids and ...
Kluge, Gunther von: German field marshal who was one of Adolf Hitler's ablest commanders on the Eastern Front during World War II. Later he played a vacillating role in the conspiracy of 1944 ...
klystron: thermionic electron tube that generates or amplifies microwaves by controlling the speed of a stream of electrons. The electrons are originally accelerated to high velocity by a potential of several ...
Klyuchevskaya Volcano: active volcano of the Kamchatka Peninsula, far eastern Russia. It is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, rising to a height of 15,584 feet (4,750 m), the ...
Klyuchevsky, Vasily Osipovich: Russian historian whose sociological approach to the study of Russia's past and lively writing and lecturing style made him one of the foremost scholars of his time.
Kmart: major American retail chain with a history of marketing general merchandise primarily through discount and variety stores.
Knaben Wunderhorn, Des: (1805-08; German: "The Boy's Magic Horn"), anthology of German folk songs, subtitled Alte deutsche Lieder ("Old German Songs"), that established its editors, the poet Clemens Brentano and the antiquarian Achim ...
Knan: city, Aichi ken (prefecture), central Honshu, Japan. It lies along the Kiso River, in the northern part of the Owari plain. Konan has been a centre of ...
Knapp, Seaman Asahel: American agriculturist who originated the method in which an expert demonstrates, farm by farm, new agricultural discoveries and technologies.
Knappertsbusch, Hans: German orchestral and opera director best remembered for his interpretations of the music of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.
Knaresborough: town ("parish"), Harrogate borough, administrative county of North Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, England. It lies on the left bank of the River Nidd where the river has cut a ...
Knebel, Karl Ludwig von: German poet who was a close friend of J.W. von Goethe and was one of the most talented of the Weimar circle of Neoclassicists.
knee: hinge joint that is formed by the meeting of the thigh bone (femur) and the larger bone (tibia) of the lower leg. The knee is the largest joint in the ...
knee-jerk reflex: sudden kicking movement of the lower leg in response to a sharp tap on the patellar tendon, which lies just below the kneecap. One of the several positions that a ...
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, Baronet: painter who became the leading portraitist in England during the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
Kneset ha-Gedola: ("Men of the Great Assembly"), assembly of Jewish religious leaders who, after returning (539 BC) to their homeland from the Babylonian Exile, initiated a new era in the history of ...
Knesset: (Hebrew: "Assembly"), unicameral parliament of Israel and supreme authority of that state. The first Knesset opened in Jerusalem on Feb. 16, 1949, and on the same day elected Chaim Weizmann ...
Knickerbocker school: group of writers active in and around New York City during the first half of the 19th century. Taking its name from Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809), ...
knife: tool or implement for cutting. Knives form the largest class of cutting implements known collectively as cutlery (q.v.).
knife case: leather or wooden container for cutlery, placed in pairs on a sideboard or buffet in the dining room. The knife case first appeared in the 17th century and was originally ...
knifefish: any of certain New World fishes of the suborder Gymnotoidei, order Cypriniformes. Knifefishes comprise, at most, about 50 species of Central and South American fishes found in quiet lakes and ...
knight: now a title of honour bestowed for a variety of services, but originally in the European Middle Ages a formally professed cavalryman.
knight bachelor: most ancient, albeit lower ranking, form of English knighthood, with its origin dating to the reign of Henry III in the 13th century.
knight service: in the European feudal system, military duties performed in return for tenures of land. The military service might be required for wars or expeditions or merely for riding and escorting ...
Knight, Etheridge: African-American poet who emerged as a robust voice of the black aesthetic movement with his first volume of verse, Poems from Prison (1968). His poetry combined the energy and bravado ...
Knight, Frank Hyneman: American economist who is considered the main founder of the "Chicago school" of economics.
Knight, Gladys, and the Pips: American vocal group that was among the most popular rhythm-and-blues and soul groups of the 1960s and '70s and that was unique in having a female lead singer and male ...
Knight, John S.: widely respected American journalist and publisher who developed Knight Newspapers, one of the major newspaper chains in the United States.
Knight, Margaret E.: prolific American inventor of machines and mechanisms for a variety of industrial and everyday purposes.
Knight, Sarah Kemble: American colonial teacher and businesswoman whose vivid and often humorous travel diary is considered one of the most authentic chronicles of 18th-century colonial life in America.
Knight, Thomas Andrew: British horticulturalist and botanist whose experiments on the adaptive responses of plants and the changes in direction of stem and root growth were the basis of later work on geotropisms.
Knighton, Henry: English chronicler and an Austin (Augustinian) canon at the Abbey of St. Mary of the Meadows in Leicester. He is important for his vivid picture of the religious reformer John ...
Knights of Columbus: international fraternal benefit society of Roman Catholic men, founded by the Reverend Michael J. McGivney and chartered by the state of Connecticut in the United States in 1882. Besides supplying ...
Knights of Labor: first important national labour organization in the United States, founded in 1869. Named the Noble Order of the Knights of Labor by its first leader, Uriah S. Stephens, it originated ...
Knightsbridge: neighbourhood in the London boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea. Located south of Hyde Park and northwest of Belgravia, in London's West End, it is the site of stately ...
Knigsberg bridge problem: a recreational mathematical puzzle, set in the old Prussian city of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia), that led to the development of the branches of mathematics known as topology and graph ...
Knipper-Chekhova, Olga Leonardovna: nee Knipper world-renowned Russian actress and the wife of playwright Anton Chekhov.
knitting: production of fabric by employing a continuous yarn or set of yarns to form a series of interlocking loops. Knit fabrics can generally be stretched to a greater degree than ...
knocking: in an internal-combustion engine, sharp sounds caused by premature combustion of part of the compressed air-fuel mixture in the cylinder. In a properly functioning engine, the charge burns with the ...
Knoop hardness: a measure of the hardness of a material, calculated by measuring the indentation produced by a diamond tip that is pressed onto the surface of a sample. The test was ...
Knopf, Alfred A.: American publisher, the founder and longtime chairman of the prestigious publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Knorozov, Yury Valentinovich: Russian linguist, epigraphist, and ethnologist, who played a major role in the decipherment of Mayan hieroglyphic writing.
Knossos: city in ancient Crete, capital of the legendary king Minos, and the principal centre of the Minoan, the earliest of the Aegean civilizations (see Minoan civilization). The site of Knossos ...
knot: in cording, the interlacement of parts of one or more ropes, cords, or other pliable materials, commonly used to bind objects together. Knots have existed from the time humans first ...
knot: in navigation, measure of speed at sea, equal to one nautical mile per hour (approximately 1.15 statute miles per hour). Thus, a ship moving at 20 knots is traveling as ...
knot: in zoology, any of several large, plump sandpiper birds in the genus Calidris of the subfamily Calidritinae (family Scolopacidae). The common knot (C. canutus), about 25 cm (10 inches) long ...
knot theory: in mathematics, the study of closed curves in three dimensions, and their possible deformations without one part cutting through another. Knots may be regarded as formed by interlacing and looping ...
Knott, Walter; and Knott, Cordelia: husband-and-wife founders of Knott's Berry Farm, a farm and nursery in Southern California that evolved into the oldest and one of the largest thematic amusement parks in the United States.
Know-Nothing party: U.S. political party that flourished in the 1850s. The Know-Nothing party was an outgrowth of the strong anti-immigrant and especially anti-Roman Catholic sentiment that started to manifest itself during the ...
Knowles, William S.: American chemist who, with Noyori Ryoji and K. Barry Sharpless, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2001 for developing the first chiral catalysts.
Knowlton, Charles: American physician whose popular treatise on birth control, the object of celebrated court actions in the United States and England, initiated the widespread use of contraceptives.
Knowsley: metropolitan borough, metropolitan county of Merseyside, historic county of Lancashire, England, just east of Liverpool. Knowsley takes its name from the parish of Knowsley, the seat of the earls of ...
Knox: county, southern Maine, U.S. It is a coastal region facing Muscongus Bay on the southwest and Penobscot Bay on the east and includes several islands, notably Vinalhaven Island and Isle ...
Knox College: private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Galesburg, Illinois, U.S. The college, founded in 1837 by Presbyterian and Congregationalist abolitionists from New York and New England, opened in 1843. It ...
Knox, Fort: major U.S. military reservation in Meade, Hardin, and Bullitt counties, northern Kentucky, U.S. It lies 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Louisville and occupies an area of 172 square miles ...
Knox, Henry: American general in the American Revolution (1775-83) and first secretary of war under the U.S. Constitution.
Knox, John: foremost leader of the Scottish Reformation, who set the austere moral tone of the Church of Scotland and shaped the democratic form of government it adopted. He was influenced by ...
Knox, Philander Chase: lawyer, Cabinet officer in three administrations, and U.S. senator.
Knox, Ronald: English author, theologian, and dignitary of the Roman Catholic Church, best known for his translation of the Bible.
Knox, Rose Markward: American businesswoman who was highly successful in promoting and selling gelatin for widespread home and industrial use.
Knoxville: city, seat (1792) of Knox county, eastern Tennessee, U.S., on the Tennessee River, which is formed just east of the city by the confluence of the Holston and French Broad ...
Knuckles: mountains in Sri Lanka, running north-south to the north of the Mahaweli Ganga Valley, rising to 6,112 ft (1,863 m) at Knuckles Peak, about 10 mi northeast of Wattegama. The ...
Knudsen, William S: Danish-born American industrialist, an effective coordinator of automobile mass production who served as president of General Motors Corporation (1937-40) and directed the government's massive armaments production program for World War ...
Knutsford: town ("parish"), Macclesfield borough, administrative and historic county of Cheshire, England. It is located on the Cheshire Plain southwest of the city of Manchester. Knutsford received a market, free burgage ...
Knyphausen, Wilhelm, Freiherr von: German soldier who after 1777 commanded "Hessian" troops on the British side in the American Revolution.
Ko: one of the four major schools of floral art in Japan. Dating from the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), the Ko school developed the shoka style of the earlier Ikenobo school into ...
Ko Hui-dong: Korean artist who pioneered in the application of Western techniques to traditional painting styles. After World War II he became a member of the South Korean government of Syngman Rhee.
Ko Hung: perhaps the best-known Taoist alchemist of China, who tried to combine Confucian ethics with the occult doctrines of Taoism.
Ko-chiu: city in southern Yunnan sheng (province), China. Ko-chiu lies near the Vietnamese border and is the site of China's most important tin-mining industry.
koala: tree-dwelling marsupial of coastal eastern Australia. The koala is about 60 to 85 cm (24 to 33 inches) long and weighs up to 14 kg (31 pounds) in the southern ...
Koami Family: Japanese lacquerware artists who were eminent for 19 generations in the Muromachi, Azuchi-Momoyama, and Tokugawa periods.
koan: in Zen Buddhism of Japan, a succinct paradoxical statement or question used as a meditation discipline for novices, particularly in the Rinzai sect. The effort to "solve" a koan is ...
kob: antelope species of the genus Kobus (q.v.).
Kobayashi Hideo: one of the most influential critics in the Japanese cultural world.
Kobayashi Issa: Japanese poet whose works in simple, unadorned language captured the spiritual loneliness of the common man. His most common subjects were insects and small animals (with whom he identified) and ...
Kobayashi Kiyochika: Japanese printmaker who adopted the effects of Western lithography and engraving, especially in his wood-block prints.