Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Sawallisch, Wolfgang, 1923–2013, German conductor, b. Munich. A specialist in the classical German repertoire, Sawallisch began conducting as a teenager. After World War II, he became a coach at the...

(Encyclopedia) Ketterle, Wolfgang, 1957–, German physicist, Ph.D. Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garching, Germany, 1986. He has been a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1990. Kett...

(Encyclopedia) exclusion principle, physical principle enunciated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1925 stating that no two electrons in an atom can occupy the same energy state simultaneously. The energy states, or levels, in ...

(Encyclopedia) Hänsch, Theodor Wolfgang, 1941–, German physicist, Ph.D. Heidelberg, 1969. He was a professor at Stanford from 1975 to 1986 and then became head of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics, Garc...

(Encyclopedia) Korngold, Erich Wolfgang, 1897–1957, American composer of film and concert music and opera, b. Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic). He began composing ballet music and operas in his t...

(Encyclopedia) Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus mōtˈsärt, Ger. vôlfˈgäng ämädāˈo͝os mōˈtsärt [key], 1756–91, Austrian composer, b. Salzburg. Mozart represents one of the great peaks in the history of music. ...

(Encyclopedia) neutrino no͞otrēˈnō [key] [Ital.,=little neutral (particle)], elementary particle with no electric charge and a very small mass emitted during the decay of certain other particles. The neutrino wa...

(Encyclopedia) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von yōˈhän vôlfˈgäng fən göˈtə [key], 1749–1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist, and scientist, b. Frankfurt. One of the great masters of world literature, his ge...

(Encyclopedia) Pacher, Michael mĭkhˈäĕl päˈkhər [key], c.1435–1498, German religious painter and probably a wood carver, a native of the Tyrol. He painted figures reminiscent of the art of Mantegna, whose w...

(Encyclopedia) condensate, matter in the form of a gas of atoms, molecules, or elementary particles that have been so chilled that their motion is virtually halted and as a consequence they lose their separate ident...