Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Gallup ... gammarid

Gallup: city, seat (1901) of McKinley county, northwestern New Mexico, U.S., on the Puerco River, near the Arizona state line. Settled in 1880 as a Westward Overland Stagecoach stop, it became a construction headquarters for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad and ...
Gallup, George Horace: American public-opinion statistician whose Gallup Poll became almost synonymous with public-opinion surveys. Gallup helped to advance the public's trust in survey research in 1936 when he, Elmo Roper, and Archibald Crossley, acting independently but using similar sampling methods, accurately forecast ...
Gallus Caesar: ruler of the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, with the title of caesar, from 351 to 354.
Gallus, Gaius Cornelius: Roman soldier and poet, famous for four books of poems to his mistress "Lycoris" (the actress Volumnia, stage name Cytheris), which, in ancient opinion, made him the first of the four greatest Roman elegiac poets.
Gallus, Gaius Vibius Trebonianus: Roman emperor from 251 to 253.
Galois, Evariste: French mathematician famous for his contributions to the part of higher algebra now known as group theory. His theory provided a solution to the long-standing question of determining when an algebraic equation can be solved by radicals (a solution containing ...
Galswintha: daughter of Athanagild, Visigothic king of Spain; sister of Brunhild, queen of Austrasia; and wife of Chilperic I, the Merovingian king of Neustria. Galswintha and Chilperic were married at Rouen in 567, but soon afterward she was murdered at the ...
Galsworthy, John: English novelist and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1932.
Galt, John: prolific Scottish novelist admired for his depiction of country life.
Galt, Sir Alexander Tilloch: Canadian statesman and influential early advocate of federation.
Galton, Sir Francis: English explorer, anthropologist, and eugenicist, known for his pioneering studies of human intelligence. He was knighted in 1909.
Galty Mountains: mountain range, extending across the border between southwestern County Tipperary and southeastern County Limerick, southern Ireland. The range has the east-west trend characteristic of the extreme south of the country. The highest peaks are formed of sandstone, the highest point ...
Galuppi, Baldassare: Italian composer whose comic operas won him the title "father of the opera buffa." His nickname derives from his birthplace, Burano.
Galvani, Luigi: Italian physician and physicist who investigated the nature and effects of what he conceived to be electricity in animal tissue. His discoveries led to the invention of the voltaic pile, a kind of battery that makes possible a constant source ...
galvanizing: protection of iron or steel against exposure to the atmosphere and consequent rusting by application of a zinc coating. Properly applied, galvanizing may protect from atmospheric corrosion for 15 to 30 years or more. As discontinuities or porosity develop in ...
galvanometer: instrument for measuring a small electrical current or a function of the current by deflection of a moving coil. The deflection is a mechanical rotation derived from forces resulting from the current.
Galveston: city, seat (1838) of Galveston county, southeastern Texas, U.S., 51 miles (82 km) southeast of Houston. It is a major deepwater port on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, at the northeast end of Galveston Island, which extends along the Texas coast ...
Galveston Bay: inlet of the Gulf of Mexico, on the southeastern shore of Texas, U.S. Protected from the gulf by the Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island, the shallow bay (average depth is 7 feet [2.1 metres]) is 35 miles (56 km) long ...
Galvez, Jose, Marques De La Sonora: Spanish colonial administrator particularly noted for his work as inspector general (visitador general) in New Spain (Mexico), 1765-71. Among his important accomplishments were the reorganization of the tax system, the formation of a government tobacco monopoly, the reorganization of the ...
Galvez, Manuel: novelist and biographer, whose documentation of a wide range of social ills in Argentina in the first half of the 20th century earned him an important position in modern Spanish American literature.
Galway: county in the province of Connaught (Connacht), western Ireland. It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean (west) and by Counties Mayo (north), Roscommon (north and east), Offaly (east), Tipperary (southeast), and Clare (south). The eastern two-thirds of Galway is part ...
Galway: seaport and county town (seat) of County Galway, western Ireland, located on the northern shore of Galway Bay.
Galway, Henri de Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny et Raineval: French soldier who became a trusted servant of the British king William III.
Gama, Basilio da: neoclassical poet and author of the Brazilian epic poem O Uraguai (1769), an account of the Portuguese-Spanish expedition against the Jesuit-controlled reservation Indians of the Uruguay River basin.
Gama, Vasco da, 1er Conde Da Vidigueira: Portuguese navigator whose voyages to India (1497-99, 1502-03, 1524) opened up the sea route from western Europe to the East by way of the Cape of Good Hope and thus ushered in a new era in world history. He also ...
Gamagri: city, southern Aichi ken (prefecture), central Honshu, Japan, facing Mikawa Bay. The city has been well known for the manufacture of cotton textiles since the Edo (Tokugawa) era (1603-1867). Mandarin orange orchards grace the mountain slopes behind ...
Gamaliel I: a tanna, one of a select group of Palestinian masters of the Jewish Oral Law, and a teacher twice mentioned in the New Testament.
Gamaliel II: nasi (president) of the Sanhedrin, at that time the supreme Jewish legislative body, in Jabneh, whose greatest achievement was the unification of the important Jewish laws and rituals in a time of external oppression by Rome and internecine quarrels.
Gamaliel III: eldest son of Judah ha-Nasi, and the renowned editor of the Mishna (the basic compilation of Jewish oral law).
Gambaga Scarp: line of cliffs along the Volta River basin, northeastern Ghana, western Africa. The scarp forms the elevated northern boundary of the Volta River basin and the eastern section of the granite plateaus of Wa and Mamprusi. To the south is ...
Gambetta, Leon: French republican statesman who helped direct the defense of France during the Franco-German War of 1870-71. In helping to found the Third Republic, he made three essential contributions: first, by his speeches and articles, he converted many Frenchmen to the ...
Gambia River: river in western Africa, 700 miles (1,120 km) long, rising in the Republic of Guinea and flowing westward through The Gambia into the Atlantic Ocean. Its major tributaries are the Sandougou and the Sofianiama. The Gambia is one of the ...
Gambia, The: country of western Africa, with an area of 4,127 square miles (10,689 square kilometres). Essentially, The Gambia is a strip of land 15 to 30 miles (25 to 50 kilometres) wide and 295 miles long on either bank of the ...
Gambia, The, history of: history of the area from precolonial times to the present.
Gambier Islands: southeasternmost extension of the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia in the central South Pacific, nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) east-southeast of Tahiti. The principal inhabited group of the Gambiers comprises the volcanic islets Mangareva (Magareva), Taravai, Akamaru, and Aukena. Mangareva, ...
Gambino, Carlo: head of one of the Five Families of organized crime in New York City from 1957 to 1976, with major interests in Brooklyn, and reputedly the "boss of bosses" of the U.S. national crime syndicate.
gambling: the betting or staking of something of value, with consciousness of risk and hope of gain, on the outcome of a game, a contest, or an uncertain event whose result may be determined by chance or accident or have an ...
gamboge: hard, brittle gum resin that is obtained from various Southeast Asian trees of the genus Garcinia and is used as a colour vehicle and in medicine. Gamboge is orange to brown in colour and when powdered turns bright yellow. Artists ...
Gamburtsev Mountains: subglacial range in the central part of eastern Antarctica, extending 750-800 miles (1,200-1,300 km). The mountains attain their greatest height at 11,120 feet (3,390 m). Completely buried under more than 1,970 feet (600 m) of the Antarctic ice cap, they ...
game: in gastronomy, the flesh of any wild animal or bird. Game is usually classified according to three categories: (1) small birds, such as the thrush and quail; (2) game proper, a category that can be subdivided into winged game, such ...
game: a universal form of recreation generally including any activity engaged in for diversion or amusement and often establishing a situation that involves a contest or rivalry. Card games are the games most commonly played by adults. Children's games include a ...
game theory: branch of applied mathematics fashioned to analyze certain situations in which there is an interplay between parties that may have similar, opposed, or mixed interests. In a typical game, decision-making "players," who each have their own goals, try to outsmart ...
gamelan: the indigenous orchestra of Java and Bali, consisting largely of several varieties of gongs and various sets of tuned instruments that are struck with mallets. The gongs are either suspended vertically or, as with the knobbed-centre, kettle-shaped bonang, placed flat. ...
Gamelin, Maurice: French army commander in chief at the beginning of World War II who proved unable to stop the German assault on France (May 1940) that led to the French collapse in June of that year.
gamete: sex, or reproductive, cell containing only one set of dissimilar chromosomes, or half of the genetic material necessary to form a complete organism (i.e., haploid). During fertilization, male and female gametes fuse, producing a diploid (i.e., containing paired chromosomes) zygote. ...
gametophyte: in certain plants, sexual phase (or an individual representing the phase) in the alternation of generations-a phenomenon in which two distinct phases occur in the life history of the plant, each phase producing the other. The alternate, nonsexual phase is ...
gamma decay: type of radioactivity in which some unstable atomic nuclei dissipate excess energy by a spontaneous electromagnetic process. In the most common form of gamma decay, known as gamma emission, gamma rays (photons, or packets of electromagnetic energy, of extremely short ...
gamma function: generalization of the factorial function to nonintegral values, introduced by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in the 18th century.
gamma globulin: subgroup of the blood proteins called globulins. In humans and many of the other mammals, antibodies, when they are formed, occur in the gamma globulins. Persons who lack gamma globulin or who have an inadequate supply of it-conditions called, respectively, ...
gamma ray: electromagnetic radiation of the shortest wavelength and highest energy.
gammarid: any member of the family Gammaridae, the largest of 80 or so families that make up the crustacean order Amphipoda. The name is sometimes also used to refer to amphipods of the genus Gammarus. The body of a gammarid is ...