Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Giacomo Da Lentini ... Gibson, Josh

Giacomo Da Lentini: senior poet of the Sicilian school and notary at the court of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II. Celebrated during his life, he was acclaimed as a master by the poets of the following generation, including Dante, who memorialized him ...
Giacosa, Giuseppe: Italian dramatist who collaborated with Luigi Illica to write the libretti for three of Giacomo Puccini's most famous operas.
Giaever, Ivar: Norwegian-born American physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 with Leo Esaki and Brian Josephson for work in solid-state physics.
Giambologna: preeminent Mannerist sculptor in Italy during the last quarter of the 16th century.
Gian Gastone: the last Medicean grand duke of Tuscany (1723-37).
Giancana, Sam: major American gangster, the top syndicate boss in Chicago from 1957 to 1966, who was noted for his friendships with show-business personalities and for his ruthlessness.
Giannini, A P: American banker, founder of the California-based Bank of Italy-later the Bank of America-which, by the 1930s, was the world's largest commercial bank. He was a major pioneer of branch banking.
Giannone, Pietro: Italian historian whose works opposed papal interference in Naples.
Giano Della Bella: wealthy and aristocratic Florentine citizen who was the leader of a "popular" movement in the 1290s and is known as the promulgator of the Ordinances of Justice (January 1293), the basis of the constitution of Florence.
giant: in folklore, huge mythical being, usually humanlike in form. The term derives (through Latin) from the Giants (Gigantes) of Greek mythology, who were monstrous, savage creatures often depicted with men's bodies terminating in serpentine legs. According to the Greek poet ...
giant arborvitae: an ornamental and timber evergreen conifer of the cypress family (Cupressaceae), native to the Pacific Coast of North America. Common lumber trade names for this species are western red cedar and British Columbia red cedar.
giant crab: (Macrocheira kaempferi), species of spider crab (q.v.) native to Pacific waters near Japan. It occurs at depths of 50 to 300 m (150 to 1,000 feet). The largest specimens may be up to 3.7 m or more from the tip ...
Giant Mountains: mountains, major segment of the Sudeten in northeastern Bohemia and part of the western Czech-Polish frontier. The highest peak in both the mountains and Bohemia is Snezka (5,256 feet [1,602 m]). The Elbe (Czech: Labe) River rises in Bohemia on ...
giant reed: (Arundo donax), tall perennial grass of the family Poaceae, native to Europe and introduced into southeastern North America as an ornamental. Giant reed is 1.8 to 7 m (about 6 to 23 feet) tall and grows in dense clumps. The ...
giant star: any star having a relatively large radius for its mass and temperature; because the radiating area is correspondingly large, the brightness of such stars is high. Subclasses of giants are supergiants, with even larger radii and brightness for their masses ...
giant water bug: any wide and flat-bodied aquatic insect of the family Belostomatidae (order Heteroptera). This family, although containing only about 100 species, includes the largest bugs in the order: sometimes exceeding 10 cm (4 inches) in the South American species Lethocerus grandis ...
giant water scorpion: any member of the extinct order Eurypterida of the arthropod class Merostomata, a group of large, scorpion-like, aquatic invertebrates that flourished during the Silurian Period (438 to 408 million years ago). Well over 200 species have been identified and divided ...
Giant's Causeway: promontory of basalt columns along 4 miles (6 km) of the northern coast of Northern Ireland. It lies on the edge of the Antrim plateau between Causeway Head and Benbane Head, some 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Londonderry. There ...
Gianti Agreement: (1755), in Indonesia, treaty between two members of the Mataram royal family as a result of a succession war in 1749-57. Pakubuwono II, king of Mataram, had backed a Chinese rebellion against the Dutch. In 1743, in payment for his ...
Giardia lamblia: single-celled parasite of the order Diplomonadida. Like those of other diplomonads, the cells of G. lamblia have two nuclei and eight flagella. The parasite attaches to human intestinal mucosa with a sucking organ, causing the diahrreal condition ...
Giardini, Felice: Italian violinist and composer who influenced the music of 18th-century England.
Giauque, William Francis: Canadian-born American physical chemist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1949 for his studies of the properties of matter at temperatures close to absolute zero.
gibber: rock- and pebble-littered area of arid or semi-arid country in Australia. The rocks are generally angular fragments formed from broken up duricrust, usually silcrete, a hardened crust of soil cemented by silica (SiO₂). The gravel cover may be only one ...
gibberellin: any of a group of plant hormones that occur in seeds, young leaves, and roots. The name is derived from Gibberella fujikuroi, a hormone-producing fungus (phylum Mycota). Evidence suggests that gibberellins stimulate the growth of main stems, especially when applied ...
gibbon: any of a dozen or so species of small apes found in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia. Gibbons, like the great apes (gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and bonobos), have a humanlike build and no tail, but gibbons seem to lack ...
Gibbon, Edward: English rationalist historian and scholar best known as the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88), a continuous narrative from the 2nd century AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
Gibbon, Lewis Grassic: Scottish novelist whose inventive trilogy published under the collective title A Scots Quair (1946) made him a significant figure in the 20th-century Scottish Renaissance.
Gibbons v. Ogden: (1824), U.S. Supreme Court case establishing the principle that states cannot, by legislative enactment, interfere with the power of Congress to regulate commerce. The state of New York agreed in 1798 to grant Robert Fulton and his backer, Robert R. ...
Gibbons, Abigail Hopper: American social reformer, remembered especially for her activism in the cause of prison reform.
Gibbons, Cedric: art director for the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) motion-picture studio; his name appears on nearly 1,500 films produced by that studio during the 32 years (1924-56) that he worked there.
Gibbons, Grinling: British wood-carver known for his decorative woodwork and for much stone ornamentation at Blenheim and Hampton Court palaces and at St. Paul's Cathedral.
Gibbons, James: archbishop of Baltimore and second Roman Catholic cardinal of North America.
Gibbons, Orlando: composer, one of the last great figures of the English polyphonic school. He was the most illustrious of a large family of musicians.
Gibbons, Stella: English novelist and poet whose first novel, Cold Comfort Farm (1932), a burlesque of the rural novel, won for her in 1933 the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize and immediate fame.
Gibbs, J Willard: theoretical physicist and chemist who was one of the greatest scientists in the United States in the 19th century. His application of thermodynamic theory converted a large part of physical chemistry from an empirical into a deductive science.
Gibbs, James: Scottish architect whose synthesis of Italian and English modes, exemplified in his church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, set a standard for 18th-century British and American church architecture.
Gibbs, William Francis: naval architect and marine engineer who directed the mass production of U.S. cargo ships during World War II, designed the famous, standardized cargo-carrying Liberty ships, and made many improvements in ship design and construction, notably in the passenger liner "United ...
Gibbs-Duhem equation: mathematical relationship between variations of temperature, pressure, and chemical potentials of a mixture or a multicomponent system. It is useful in solving many chemical problems and in establishing relations between properties of multicomponent systems and tabulated properties of one-component systems.
gibbsite: the mineral aluminum hydroxide [Al(OH)₃] an important constituent of bauxite (q.v.) deposits, particularly those in the Western Hemisphere, where it occurs as white, glassy crystals, earthy masses, or crusts. In significant deposits it is of secondary origin, but small-scale hydrothermal ...
Gibeah: ancient town of the Israelite tribe of Benjamin, located just north of Jerusalem. The site, severely denuded by wind and rain, was partly excavated by William F. Albright in 1922 and 1933. A summit fortress had originally been built in ...
Gibeon: important town of ancient Palestine, located northwest of Jerusalem. Its inhabitants submitted voluntarily to Joshua at the time of the Israelite conquest of Canaan (Josh. 9). Excavations undertaken in 1956 by a U.S. expedition revealed that the site had been ...
Gibraltar: British overseas territory occupying a narrow peninsula of Spain's southern Mediterranean coast, just northeast of the Strait of Gibraltar. It is 3 miles (5 km) long and 0.75 mile (1.2 km) wide and is connected to Spain by a low, ...
Gibraltar remains: Neanderthal fossils and associated materials found at Gibraltar, on the southern tip of Spain. The Gibraltar limestone is riddled with natural caves, many of which were at times occupied by Neanderthals during the Late Pleistocene Epoch (approximately 130,000 to 10,000 ...
Gibraltar, Strait of: channel connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean, lying between southernmost Spain and northwesternmost Africa. It is 36 miles (58 km) long and narrows to 8 miles (13 km) in width between Point Marroqui (Spain) and Point Cires (Morocco). ...
Gibran, Khalil: Lebanese-American philosophical essayist, novelist, poet, and artist.
Gibson Desert: arid zone in the interior of Western Australia. The desert lies south of the Tropic of Capricorn between the Great Sandy Desert (north), the Great Victoria Desert (south), the Northern Territory border (east), and Lake Disappointment (west). The area now ...
Gibson, Althea: American tennis player who dominated women's competition in the late 1950s. She was the first black player to win the French (1956), Wimbledon (1957-58), and U.S. Open (1957-58) singles championships.
Gibson, Bob: American professional National League right-handed baseball pitcher, who was at his best in crucial games. In nine World Series games, he won seven and lost two.
Gibson, Charles Dana: artist and illustrator, whose Gibson girl drawings delineated the American ideal of femininity at the turn of the century.
Gibson, John: British Neoclassical sculptor who tried to revive the ancient Greek practice of tinting marble sculptures.
Gibson, Josh: American professional baseball player called the black Babe Ruth, one of the greatest players kept from the major leagues by the unwritten rule (enforced until the year of his death) against hiring black ballplayers.