Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Edam ... Edinburgh, University of

Edam: semisoft cow's-milk cheese of Holland, usually molded in 2 to 4 pound (0.9 to 1.8 kilogram) spheres and coated in red paraffin; Edam is also produced in red-coated rectangular loaves. Originally the rind was brushed with vermilion to distinguish it ...
Edam: dorp (village) in Edam-Volendam gemeente (municipality), Noord-Holland provincie (province), northwestern Netherlands, on the IJsselmeer (Lake IJssel). Named for the dam built on the Ye, which joined the Purmer Lake (now polder) to the Zuiderzee, it became an important harbour, fishing ...
Edaphosaurus: primitive herbivorous relative of mammals that is found in fossil deposits dating from Late Carboniferous to the Early Permian periods (323 to 256 million years ago).
Edbert: also spelled Eadbert, or Eadberht in Anglo-Saxon England, king of Northumbrians from 737 to 758, a strong king whose reign was regarded by the contemporary scholar and churchman Alcuin as the kingdom's golden age.
Edda: body of ancient Icelandic literature contained in two 13th-century books commonly distinguished as the Prose, or Younger, Edda and the Poetic, or Elder, Edda. It is the fullest and most detailed source for modern knowledge of Germanic mythology.
Eddington, Sir Arthur Stanley: English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician who did his greatest work in astrophysics, investigating the motion, internal structure, and evolution of stars. He also was the first expositor of the theory of relativity in the English language.
Eddison, E.R.: English novelist and scholar of Icelandic literature whose works in the genre of romantic fantasy influenced the English fantasist J.R.R. Tolkien.
Eddy: county, southeastern New Mexico, U.S., bordered on the south by Texas. Its western region is in the Sacramento section of the Basin and Range province, a rugged area where the Guadalupe Mountains rise to more than 6,000 feet (1,800 m). ...
eddy: fluid current whose flow direction differs from that of the general flow; the motion of the whole fluid is the net result of the movements of the eddies that compose it. Eddies can transfer much more energy and dissolved matter ...
eddy current: in electricity, motion of electric charge induced entirely within a conducting material by a varying electric or magnetic field or by electromagnetic waves. Eddy currents induced in a power transformer core represent lost power and are undesirable; eddy currents used ...
Eddy, Duane: American guitarist responsible for one of rock music's elemental sounds, twang-resonant melodic riffs created on the bass strings of an electric guitar. One of early rock's most influential and popular instrumentalists, Eddy had 15 Top 40 hits between 1958 and ...
Eddy, Mary Baker: Christian religious reformer and founder of the religious denomination known as Christian Science.
Eddystone Lighthouse: lighthouse celebrated in folk ballads and seamen's lore, standing on the Eddystone Rocks, 14 miles off Plymouth, Eng., in the English Channel. The first lighthouse (1696-99), built of timber, was swept away with its designer, Henry Winstanley, by the great ...
Ede: gemeente (commune), Gelderland provincie, central Netherlands. It lies on the western edge of the wooded-heath Veluwe region. Founded in the 8th century by the Saxons, it is a garrison town with a 15th-century church, ...
Ede: town, Osun state, southwestern Nigeria. It lies along the Osun River at a point on the railroad from Lagos, 112 miles (180 km) southwest, and at the intersection of roads from Oshogbo, Ogbomosho, and Ife. Ede is one of the ...
Edea: town, southwestern Cameroon, at the head of steamboat navigation of the lower Sanaga River. Aluminum from Fria in Guinea is the basis of the town's aluminum industry, which produces aluminum ingots, sheet metal, and household products. A school, a hospital, ...
Edel, Leon: American literary critic and biographer, who was the foremost 20th-century authority on the life and works of Henry James.
Edelinck, Gerard: Flemish copperplate engraver during the best period of French portrait engraving.
Edelman, Gerald Maurice: American physician and physical chemist who elucidated the structure of antibodies-proteins that are produced by the body in response to infection. For this work he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1972 with British biochemist Rodney Porter. ...
Edelman, Marian Wright: American lawyer and civil rights activist who founded the Children's Defense Fund in 1973.
edelweiss: (Leontopodium alpinum), perennial plant of the family Asteraceae, native to alpine areas of Europe and South America. It has 2 to 10 yellow flower heads in a dense cluster, and, below these flower heads, 6 to 9 lance-shaped, woolly, white ...
edema: in medicine, an abnormal accumulation of watery fluid in the intercellular spaces of connective tissue. Edematous tissues are swollen and, when punctured, secrete a thin incoagulable fluid. This fluid is essentially an ultrafiltrate of serum but also contains small amounts ...
Eden: district, administrative county of Cumbria, northwestern England, in the eastern part of the county. A line running through the district from the River Tees, past the village of Culgaith and along the River Eamont and the Ullswater, to Stybarrow Dodd ...
Eden, Anthony: British foreign secretary in 1935-38, 1940-45, and 1951-55 and prime minister from 1955 to 1957.
Eden, Garden of: in the Old Testament Book of Genesis, biblical earthly paradise inhabited by the first created man and woman, Adam and Eve, prior to their expulsion for disobeying the commandments of God. It is also called in Genesis the Garden of ...
Eden, Nils: historian and politician who led what is generally regarded as the first parliamentary government in Swedish history.
Eden, River: river in northern England. It rises in the fells (uplands) that connect the Lake District with the highlands of the Pennines and flows 90 miles (145 km) northwestward to its estuary in the Solway Firth, an Irish Sea inlet. From ...
Eden, Vale of: broad valley in the administrative county of Cumbria, England, separating the northern Pennines from the Lake District massif. The upper valley lies in the historic county of Westmorland and the lower valley in the historic county of Cumberland. The River ...
Edenbridge: town ("parish"), Sevenoaks district, administrative and historic county of Kent, England, south of London near the Surrey border, on the River Eden. It was enlarged after 1970 to accommodate overspill population from London, and light industries have been introduced. Nearby ...
Edenderry: market town, County Offaly, Ire., on the northern edge of the Bog of Allen. The town, including the Court House, was largely built by the marquesses of Downshire in the 18th and early 19th centuries. South of the town are ...
Edenton: town, seat of Chowan county, northeastern North Carolina, U.S., on Albemarle Sound. Settled about 1660, the first permanent settlement in colonial North Carolina, it went under several names before it was incorporated in 1722 and named for Charles Eden, the ...
Ederle, Gertrude: first woman to swim the English Channel and one of the best-known American sports personages of the 1920s.
EDES: nationalist guerrilla force that, bolstered by British support, constituted the only serious challenge to EAM-ELAS (q.v.) control of the resistance movement in occupied Greece during World War II. Led by Gen. Napoleon Zervas, EDES was originally liberal and antimonarchist; but ...
Edes, Benjamin: founder and co-owner with John Gill of the New England newspaper the Boston Gazette and Country Journal. As editor and publisher of the Gazette, Edes made the paper a leading voice favouring American independence.
Edessa: chief city, nomos (department) of Pella, Macedonia, Greece, on a steep bluff above the valley of the Loudhias Potamos (river). A swift, fragmented stream flowing through the town was known in ancient times as the Skirtos ("Leaper") ...
Edgar: king of the Mercians and Northumbrians from 957 who became king of the West Saxons, or Wessex, in 959 and is reckoned as king of all England from that year. He was efficient and tolerant of local customs, and his ...
Edgar: king of Scots from 1097, eldest surviving son of Malcolm III Canmore and Queen Margaret (granddaughter of King Edmund II of England) and thus the first king of the Scots to unite Celtic and Anglo-Saxon blood.
Edgar The Aetheling: Anglo-Saxon prince, who, at the age of about 15, was proposed as king of England after the death of Harold II in the Battle of Hastings (Oct. 14, 1066) but instead served the first two Norman kings, William I, Harold's ...
Edgartown: town (township), seat of Dukes county, southeastern Massachusetts, U.S. The town comprises Chappaquiddick Island and the eastern tip of the island of Martha's Vineyard. The oldest settlement on the island, Edgartown dates from 1642 and was incorporated in 1671 and ...
Edgefield: county, western South Carolina, U.S. It consists of a hilly piedmont region bounded to the southwest by the Savannah River border with Georgia. Much of the county is within the southern portion of Sumter National Forest.
Edgerton, Harold E.: American electrical engineer and photographer who was noted for creating high-speed photography techniques that he applied to scientific uses.
Edgeworth, Francis Ysidro: Irish economist and statistician who innovatively applied mathematics to the fields of economics and statistics.
Edgeworth, Maria: Anglo-Irish writer, known for her children's stories and for her novels of Irish life.
Edgeworth, Richard Lovell: Anglo-Irish inventor and educationalist who had a dominant influence on the novels of his daughter Maria Edgeworth.
Ediacara fauna: assemblage of relatively advanced multicellular Precambrian animals found as fossils in the Pound Quartzite of the Ediacara Hills, north of Adelaide, South Australia (the Precambrian began about 3.8 billion years ago and ended 540 million years ago). The discovery of ...
Edib Adivar, Halide: novelist and pioneer in the emancipation of women in Turkey.
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania: public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, U.S. It is one of 14 universities in Pennsylvania's State System of Higher Education. The university includes the schools of Liberal Arts, Education, and Science, Management, and Technologies. In addition to ...
Edinburg: city, seat (1908) of Hidalgo county, extreme southern Texas, U.S., in the lower Rio Grande valley, 55 miles (89 km) west-northwest of Brownsville. With McAllen and Pharr it forms a metropolitan complex. Old Edinburgh, which no longer exists, was founded ...
Edinburgh: capital city of Scotland, located in southeastern Scotland with its centre near the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, an arm of the North Sea that thrusts westward into the Scottish Lowlands. The city and its immediate surroundings constitute ...
Edinburgh Review, The, or The Critical Journal: Scottish magazine that was published from 1802 to 1929, and which contributed to the development of the modern periodical and to modern standards of literary criticism. The Edinburgh Review was founded by Francis Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Henry Brougham as ...
Edinburgh, University of: coeducational, privately controlled institution of higher education at Edinburgh, one of the most noted of Scotland's universities. It was founded in 1583 as "the Town's College" under Presbyterian auspices by the Edinburgh town council under a charter granted in 1582 ...