Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Gajdusek, D. Carleton ... gall

Gajdusek, D. Carleton: American physician and medical researcher, corecipient (with Baruch S. Blumberg) of the 1976 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his research on the causal agents of various degenerative neurological disorders.
gal: unit of acceleration, named in honour of the Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and used especially in measurements of gravity. One gal equals a change in rate of motion of one centimetre (0.3937 inch) per second per second.
Gal Oya: river, eastern Sri Lanka. It rises in the hill country east of Badulla and flows north and east past Inginiyagala to the Indian Ocean 10 miles (16 km) south of Lalmunai. The Gal Oya river is the main source feeding ...
galactic cluster: in astronomy, any group of young stars held together by mutual gravitation (see star cluster).
galactic coordinate: in astronomy, galactic latitude or longitude. The two coordinates constitute a useful means of locating the relative positions and motions of components of the Milky Way Galaxy. Galactic latitude is measured in degrees north or south of the Galaxy's fundamental ...
galactic halo: in astronomy, nearly spherical volume of thinly scattered stars, globular clusters of stars, and tenuous gas observed surrounding spiral galaxies, including the Milky Way-the galaxy in which the Earth is located. The roughly spherical halo of the Milky Way is ...
galactorrhea: excessive flow of milk from the breast, or lactation that is not associated with childbirth or nursing. The abnormal production of milk in women is usually due to excessive levels of estrogen in the body or to excessive production of ...
galactose: a member of a group of carbohydrates known as simple sugars (monosaccharides). It is usually found in nature combined with other sugars, as, for example, in lactose (milk sugar). Galactose is also found in complex carbohydrates (see polysaccharide) and in ...
galactose tolerance test: procedure assessing liver function. The healthy liver is able to convert galactose, one type of sugar, to glucose, the major sugar in the body. In persons with liver disease, this ability is defective; the administration of galactose results in the ...
galactosemia: a hereditary defect in the metabolism of the sugar galactose, which is a constituent of lactose, the main carbohydrate of milk. Infants with this condition appear normal at birth, but, after a few days of milk feeding, they begin to ...
Galahad: the pure knight in Arthurian romance, son of Lancelot du Lac and Elaine (daughter of Pelles), who achieved the vision of God through the Holy Grail. In the first romance treatments of the Grail story (e.g., Chretien de Troyes's 12th-century ...
Galamian, Ivan: Persian-born violinist and teacher who stressed attention to technical detail and mental control in his training of such virtuoso violinists as Itzhak Perlman.
Galapagos finch: distinctive group of birds whose radiation into several ecological niches in the competition-free isolation of the Galapagos Islands and on Cocos Island gave the English naturalist Charles Darwin evidence for his thesis that "species are not immutable." The three genera ...
Galapagos Islands: island group of the eastern Pacific Ocean, administratively a province of Ecuador. The Galapagos consist of 13 major islands (ranging in area from 5.4 to 1,771 square miles [14 to 4,588 square km]), 6 smaller islands, and scores of islets ...
Galashiels: town, Scottish Borders council area, southeastern Scotland. It is on Gala Water near its junction with the River Tweed, 33 miles (53 km) south-southeast of Edinburgh. The part of the town on the west bank of the Gala lies within ...
Galati: judet (county), eastern Romania, bounded on the east by Moldova. The county is bordered in the east by the Prut River and in the south and west by the Siret River, both of which drain southeastward. Amid the lowlands and ...
Galati: city, capital of Galati judet (county), southeastern Romania. An inland port about 120 miles (190 km) northeast of Bucharest, it is situated on an eminence among the marshes at the confluence of the Danube and Siret rivers, on the southwestern ...
Galatia: ancient district in central Anatolia that was occupied early in the 3rd century BC by Celtic tribes, whose bands of marauders created havoc among neighbouring Hellenistic states. Invited from Europe to participate in a Bithynian civil war (278 BC), the ...
Galatians, The Letter of Paul to the: New Testament writing addressed to Christian churches (exact location uncertain) that were disturbed by a Judaizing faction within the early Christian church. The members of this faction taught that Christian converts were obliged to observe circumcision and other prescriptions of ...
galaxy: any of the systems of stars and interstellar matter that make up the Cosmos. Many such assemblages are so enormous that they contain hundreds of billions of stars.
Galba: Roman emperor for seven months (AD 68-69). His administration was priggishly upright, though his advisers were allegedly corrupt.
Galbraith, John Kenneth: Canadian-born American economist and public servant known for his support of public spending and for the literary quality of his writing on public affairs.
Galdho Peak: highest mountain peak of Norway and the Scandinavian Peninsula. It lies in the Jotunheim Mountains, western Oppland fylke (county), south-central Norway, and rises to 8,100 feet (2,469 metres). The nearby Mount Glitter has a height of 8,084 ...
gale: air current that is stronger than a breeze; specifically a current of 28-55 knots (50-102 kilometres per hour), corresponding to force numbers 7 to 10 on the Beaufort scale (q.v.).
Gale, Richard Nelson: British army officer who commanded the British airborne troops employed in northwestern Europe during World War II.
Gale, Zona: American novelist and playwright whose Miss Lulu Bett (1920) established her as a realistic chronicler of Midwestern village life.
Galen Of Pergamum: Greek physician, writer, and philosopher who exercised a dominant influence on medical theory and practice in Europe from the Middle Ages until the mid-17th century. His authority in the Byzantine world and the Muslim Middle East was similarly long-lived.
Galen, Clemens August, Graf von: Roman Catholic bishop of Munster, Germany, who was noted for his public opposition to Nazism.
Galena: city, seat (1827) of Jo Daviess county, northwestern Illinois, U.S. It lies along the Galena River (originally called Fever River), 4 miles (6 km) east of the Mississippi River and about 15 miles (25 km) southeast of Dubuque, Iowa. French ...
galena: a gray lead sulfide (PbS), the chief ore mineral of lead. One of the most widely distributed sulfide minerals, it occurs in many different types of deposits, often in metalliferous veins, as at Broken Hill, Australia; Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, U.S.; ...
Galerius: Roman emperor from 305 to 311, notorious for his persecution of Christians.
Galesburg: city, seat (1873) of Knox county, western Illinois, U.S. It lies about 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Peoria. George Washington Gale, a Presbyterian minister for whom the city is named, selected the site for a college community. In 1836 ...
Galgodon Highlands: region of broken mountain terrain, northern Somalia, eastern Africa. It lies parallel to the Gulf of Aden south of the "burnt" Guban coastal plain, and extends from the Ethiopian border in the west to Cape Gwardafuy (Caseyr) in the east. ...
Galiani, Ferdinando: Italian economist whose studies in value theory anticipated much later work.
Galib Dede: also called Seyh Galib, pseudonyms of Mehmed Es' Ad Turkish poet, one of the last great classical poets of Ottoman literature.
Galicia: historic region of eastern Europe that was a part of Poland before Austria annexed it in 1772; in the 20th century it was restored to Poland but was later divided between Poland and the Soviet Union.
Galicia: comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community") and historic region of Spain encompassing the northwestern Spanish provincias of Lugo, A Coruna, Pontevedra, and Ourense. The comunidad autonoma was established by the statute of autonomy ...
Galician language: Romance language with many similarities to the Portuguese language. It is spoken by some 4 million people, mostly in the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain-where almost 90 percent of the population spoke Galician at the turn of the 21st century-but ...
Galilean telescope: instrument for viewing distant objects, named after the great Italian scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who first constructed one in 1609. With it, he discovered Jupiter's four largest satellites, spots on the Sun, phases of Venus, and hills and valleys on ...
Galilean transformations: set of equations in classical physics that relate the space and time coordinates of two systems moving at a constant velocity relative to each other. Adequate to describe phenomena at speeds much smaller than the speed of light, Galilean transformations ...
Galilee: northernmost region of ancient Palestine, corresponding to modern northern Israel. Its biblical boundaries are indistinct; conflicting readings leave clear only that it was part of the territory of the northern tribe of Naphtali.
galilee: type of porch (q.v.) that was developed during the Gothic period.
Galilee, Sea of: lake in Israel through which the Jordan River flows. From 1948 to 1967 it was bordered immediately to the northeast by the cease-fire line with Syria. It is famous for its biblical associations. Located 686 feet (209 m) below sea ...
Galilei, Vincenzo: father of the astronomer Galileo and a leader of the Florentine Camerata, a group of musical and literary amateurs who sought to revive the monodic (single melody) singing style of ancient Greece.
Galileo: Italian natural philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made fundamental contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method. His formulation of (circular) inertia, the law of falling bodies, and parabolic ...
Galileo: in space exploration, robotic U.S. spacecraft launched to Jupiter for extended orbital study of the planet, its magnetic field, and its moons. Galileo was a follow-on to the much briefer flyby visits of Pioneers 10 and 11 (1973-74) and Voyagers ...
Galili, Yisrael: Russian-born political commander of the Haganah, Israeli's preindependence defense force.
Galinthias: in Greek mythology, a friend, or servant, of Alcmene, who bore Zeus's son Heracles (Hercules). While Alcmene was in labour, Zeus's jealous wife, Hera, goddess of childbirth, was clasping her hands, thus by magic preventing delivery. To foil this, Galinthias ...
Galitzen, Michael Riley: American diver who won four Olympic medals.
Galiwinku: island in the Arafura Sea, 2 miles (3 km) across Cadell Strait from Napier Peninsula, a part of Northern Territory, Australia, and of the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Reserve. It is low-lying, 30 miles (48 km) long by 7 miles (11 ...
gall: an abnormal, localized outgrowth or swelling of plant tissue caused by infection from bacteria, fungi, viruses, and nematodes or irritation by insects and mites. See black knot; cedar-apple rust; clubroot; crown gall.