Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Celsius, Anders änˈdərs sĕlˈsēŭs [key], 1701–44, Swedish astronomer. While professor of astronomy at the Univ. of Uppsala (1730–44), he traveled through Germany, France, and Italy, visiting...

(Encyclopedia) paranoia prˌənoiˈə [key], in psychology, a term denoting persistent, unalterable, systematized, logically reasoned delusions, or false beliefs, usually of persecution or grandeur. In the former ca...

(Encyclopedia) Chaldaea or Chaldea both: kăldēˈə [key], properly the southernmost portion of the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. Sometimes it is extended to include Babylonia and thus comprises al...

(Encyclopedia) living will or advance health care directive, legal document in which a person expresses in advance his or her wishes concerning the use of artificial life support and other medical treatment should t...

(Encyclopedia) opposition, in astronomy, alignment of two celestial bodies on opposite sides of the sky as viewed from earth. Opposition of the moon or planets is often determined in reference to the sun. Only the s...

(Encyclopedia) color index, in astronomy, difference in an object's brightness as recorded between any two well-defined bands of the electromagnetic spectrum by using optical filters of different colors. If blue and...

(Encyclopedia) Behaim, Behem, or Boeheim, Martin all: bāˈhīm [key], b. 1436? or 1459?, d. 1506?, German traveler and cosmographer. He studied (possibly under Regiomontanus) astronomy, navigation, and mathematics....

(Encyclopedia) Apianus, Petrus pāˈtər bēˈnəvĭts, bĕnˈəvĭts [key], 1495–1552, German cosmographer and mathematician. He was professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt and was noted for his knowledge of astro...

(Encyclopedia) Moscow State University, at Moscow, Russia, officially M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State Univ.; founded 1755 as Moscow Univ. by the Russian scientist M. V. Lomonosov, renamed Moscow State Univ. after the R...

(Encyclopedia) Schiller, Friedrich von, 1759–1805, German dramatist, poet, and historian, one of the greatest of German literary figures, b. Marbach, Württemberg. The poets of German romanticism were strongly inf...