Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) body language, nonverbal communication by means of facial expessions, eye behavior, gestures, posture, and the like. Body language expresses emotions, feelings, and attitudes, sometimes even contradic...

(Encyclopedia) Wilkins, Maurice Hugh Frederick, 1916–2004, British biophysicist, b. New Zealand, Ph.D. Univ. of Birmingham, 1940. He conducted research at the Univ. of St. Andrews, Scotland, and at Kings College, ...

(Encyclopedia) Siegbahn, Karl Manne Georg, 1886–1978, Swedish physicist. In 1913, he began a series of experiments that led to the discovery of the M series of X rays and demonstrated the shell arrangement of elec...

(Encyclopedia) Barkla, Charles Glover glŭˈvər bärˈklə [key], 1877–1944, English physicist. He was professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh from 1913. For his discovery of the characteristic X rays of ele...

(Encyclopedia) Laue, Max von mäks fən louˈə [key], 1879–1960, German physicist, studied under Max Planck. From 1919 he was professor of theoretical physics at the Univ. of Berlin. He worked out a method for me...

(Encyclopedia) California Institute of Technology, at Pasadena, Calif.; originally for men, became coeducational in 1970; founded 1891 as Throop Polytechnic Institute; called Throop College of Technology, 1913–20....

(Encyclopedia) Crab Nebula, diffuse gaseous nebula in the constellation Taurus; cataloged as NGC 1952 and M1, the first object recorded in Charles Messier's catalog of nonstellar objects (see Messier catalog). It is...

(Encyclopedia) Richter, Hans rĭkhˈtər [key], 1888–1976, American artist, b. Germany. A painter and filmmaker, Richter was influenced by cubism and Dada and was a member of the Dutch de Stijl group (see Stijl, ...

(Encyclopedia) Lipscomb, William Nunn, Jr. lĭpˈskəm [key], 1919–2011, American physical chemist, b. Cleveland, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1946. A professor of chemistry at the Univ. of Minnesota ...

(Encyclopedia) pentimento pĕnˌtəmĕnˈtō [key], painter's term for the evidence in a work that the original composition has been changed. Often the opaque pigment with which the artist covered a mistake or unwan...