Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

0-9

Irwin, James B. ... Isham, Ralph Heyward

Irwin, James B.: American astronaut, pilot of the Lunar Module on the Apollo 15 mission (July 26-Aug. 7, 1971), in which he and the mission commander, David R. Scott, spent almost three days on the Moon's surface investigating the Hadley-Apennine site, 462 miles ...
Irwin, May: American comedienne and music-hall performer who popularized such songs as "After the Ball" and "A Hot Time in the Old Town."
Irzykowski, Karol: Polish novelist and literary critic well known for his rejection of Realism, which he considered a pretense.
Isa ibn Musa: nephew of the first two 'Abbasid caliphs, military leader, and at one time presumptive heir to the caliphate.
Isaac: in the Old Testament (Genesis), second of the patriarchs of Israel, the only son of Abraham and Sarah, and father of Esau and Jacob. Although Sarah was past the age of childbearing, God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would ...
Isaac ben Moses Of Vienna: medieval codifier of Jewish law (Halakha) whose vast compilation, Or Zaru'a ("Light Is Sown"), was widely quoted in later Halakhic works. Or Zaru'a is also valued by historians for its descriptions of Jewish life in medieval France, Germany, and Italy.
Isaac I Comnenus: Byzantine emperor who restored economic stability at home and built up the neglected military defenses of the empire.
Isaac II Angelus: Byzantine emperor, who, although incapable of stemming administrative abuses, partly succeeded, by his defeat of the Serbians in 1190, in retrieving imperial fortunes in the Balkans.
Isaac Of Antioch: Syrian writer, probably a priest of an independent Syrian Christian church and author of a wealth of theological literature and historical verse describing events in Rome and Asia Minor.
Isaac of Nineveh: Syrian bishop, theologian, and monk whose writings on mysticism became a fundamental source for both Eastern and Western Christians.
Isaac Of Stella: monk, philosopher, and theologian, a leading thinker in 12th-century Christian humanism and proponent of a synthesis of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian philosophies.
Isaac the Great, Saint: Armenian Sahak celebrated catholicos, or spiritual head, of the Armenian Apostolic (Orthodox) Church, principal advocate of Armenian cultural and ecclesiastical independence and collaborator in the first translation of the Bible and varied Christian literature into Armenian.
Isaac, Heinrich: one of the three leading composers (with Jakob Obrecht and Josquin des Prez) of the Flemish school in the late 15th century.
Isaacs, Jorge: Colombian poet and novelist whose best work, Maria (1867; Maria: A South American Romance, 1977), was one of the most famous Latin-American novels of the 19th century.
Isabela: province, northeastern Luzon, Philippines. It has an area of 4,118 sq mi (10,665 sq km). Its eastern section comprises the rugged, sparsely populated Sierra Madre Mountains, which extend to the Philippine Sea. The province was created and named for Queen ...
Isabela Island: largest of the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. It lies in the eastern Pacific Ocean 600 miles (965 km) west of Ecuador and has an area of 2,249 square miles (5,825 square km). Named in the 17th century for George Monck, duke ...
Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess of Austria: infanta of Spain who became the instrument of her father's claims to the thrones of England and France; as archduchess of Austria, she ruled the Spanish Netherlands with her husband, Archduke Albert, from 1598 to 1621.
Isabella Farnese: queen consort of Philip V of Spain (reigned 1700-46), whose ambitions to secure Italian possessions for her children embroiled Spain in wars and intrigues for three decades. Her capability in choosing able and devoted ministers, however, brought about beneficial internal ...
Isabella I: queen of Castile (1474-1504) and of Aragon (1479-1504), ruling the two kingdoms jointly from 1479 with her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon (Ferdinand V of Castile). Their rule effected the permanent union of Spain and the beginning of an overseas ...
Isabella I: queen of Jerusalem (1192-1205).
Isabella II: queen of Spain (1833-68) whose troubled reign was marked by political instability and the rule of military politicians. Isabella's failure to respond to growing demands for a more progressive regime, her questionable private life, and her political irresponsibility contributed to ...
Isabella II: queen of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem (1212-28) and consort of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II.
Isabella Of Bavaria: queen consort of Charles VI of France, who frequently was regent because of her husband's periodic insanity. Her gravest political act was the signing of the Treaty of Troyes (May 21, 1420), which recognized King Henry V of England as ...
Isabella Of France: queen consort of Edward II of England, who played a principal part in the deposition of the King in 1327.
Isabelline: vigorous, inventive, and cosmopolitan architectural style created during the joint reign of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, which in turn formed the basis for the Plateresque style. The Isabelline style is not a pure style in that but ...
Isabey, Jean-Baptiste: gifted French painter and printmaker, specializing in portraits and miniatures. He enjoyed official favour from the time of Louis XVI until his death. His portrait Napoleon at Malmaison (1802) is considered one of the best likenesses of ...
Isaeus: professional speech writer at Athens specializing in testamentary law, whose lucidity and logical method were a landmark in the development of forensic oratory.
Isafjordhur: town, northwestern Iceland, on Vestfjarda Peninsula, overlooking Isa Fjord (Isafjordhur). It is a regional market centre and is the principal fishing port of northwestern Iceland. In addition to fishing and fish-processing industries, Isafjordhur has a plant that manufactures windows. Boatbuilding ...
Isahaya: city, Nagasaki ken (prefecture), Kyushu, Japan, at the neck of the three peninsulas of Shimabara, Nagasaki, and Nishisonoki. The city has been an important commercial centre for the surrounding agricultural area since the 13th century. It became a castle town ...
Isaiah: prophet after whom the biblical Book of Isaiah is named (only some of the first 39 chapters are attributed to him), a significant contributor to Jewish and Christian traditions. His call to prophecy in about 742 BC coincided with the ...
Isaiah, Ascension of: pseudepigraphal work surviving intact only in a 5th-7th-century-AD Ethiopic edition. Fragments exist in Greek, Coptic, Latin, and Old Slavonic. Three separate works comprise the total book, the final version by a Christian editor, which appeared in the 2nd century AD. ...
Isaiah, Book of: one of the major prophetical writings of the Old Testament. The superscription identifies Isaiah as the son of Amoz and his book as "the vision of Isaiah . . . concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, ...
Isanavarman: chief of the Maukhari family of northern India, originally a feudatory of the Gupta Empire, who by the middle of the 6th century had declared his independence from the Guptas and set himself up as a king in the Ganges ...
Isandhlwana and Rorke's Drift, Battles of: (Jan. 22-23, 1879), the major battles of the Zulu War, in South Africa. At Isandhlwana, the British failure to defend their encampment led to the obliteration of an imperial force of about 1,700 men by more than 20,000 Zulu, who ...
Isar River: river, Bavaria Land (state), southern Germany. Rising at an elevation of 5,741 feet (1,750 m) in the Karwendelgebirge, just northeast of Innsbruck, Austria, the Isar runs west and then north crossing into Germany at Scharnitz Pass. The river there flows ...
Isauria: ancient inland district of south central Anatolia. Its inhabitants, a mountain people described by Greco-Roman authors as warlike and uncivilized, were conquered by the Roman general Servilius "Isauricus" early in the 1st century BC. Their country with its capital, Isaura ...
Ischia, Island of: island at the northwest entrance to the Bay of Naples, opposite Capo (cape) Miseno, Napoli province, Campania region, southern Italy, just west-southwest of Naples. Oblong in shape, with a circumference of 21 mi (34 km) and an area of 18 ...
Ise: city, Mie ken (prefecture), southern Honshu, Japan, on Ise Bay (Ise-wan) of the Pacific Ocean. The city contains several major Shinto shrines. Central among these is the Grand Shrine of Ise (Ise-daijingu; more commonly called the Ise ...
Ise Shinto: school of Shinto established by priests of the Watarai family who served at the Outer Shrine of the Ise Shrine (Ise-jingu). Ise Shinto establishes purity and honesty as the highest virtues, realizable through religious experience.
Ise-Shima National Park: national park on the Shima Peninsula, central Honshu, Japan. Its two main cities are Ise, famous for its Shinto shrines, and Toba, a seaport that guards the southern entrance to Ise Bay (Ise-wan). The bay has many islands and is ...
Iselin, Columbus O'D: American oceanographer who, as director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1940-50; 1956-57) in Massachusetts, expanded its facilities 10-fold and made it one of the largest research establishments of its kind in the world.
Isengrim: greedy and dull-witted wolf who is a prominent character in many medieval European beast epics. Often cast as a worldly and corrupt churchman, he appears first as a character in the Latin Ecbasis captivi (c. 940), in which the beasts ...
isentropic chart: meteorological map that shows the moisture distribution and flow of air along a surface of constant entropy, which is also a surface of constant potential temperature (the temperature a parcel of dry air would have if brought from its initial ...
Iseo, Lake: lake in Lombardia (Lombardy) region, northern Italy, between Bergamo and Brescia provinces, at the southern foot of the Alps at an altitude of 610 feet (186 m). The lake is 15.5 miles (25 km) long with a maximum width of ...
Isere River: river, southwestern France, originating in the Savoy Alps on the Italian frontier and flowing 180 miles (290 km) to its confluence with the Rhone above Valence, draining a basin of approximately 4,600 square miles (12,000 square km). It rises in ...
Iserlohn: city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), western Germany. It lies at the entrance to the hilly, wooded Sauerland region, southeast of Dortmund. First mentioned in the 11th century, Iserlohn was chartered in 1237 and was famous in the ...
Isernia: capital of Isernia province (formed 1970), Molise region, south central Italy, between the Carpino and Sordo rivers, west of Campobasso. It originated as Aesernia, a town of the Samnites (an ancient Italic people), and later became a Roman colony. Isernia ...
Isesaki: city, Gumma Prefecture (ken), Honshu, Japan, on the Ryomo Line (railway) between Takasaki and Oyama. Isesaki prospered as a market town around a castle built in the early Tokugawa period (1603-1867) and was known for its silk manufacture, which employed ...
Iseyin: town, Oyo State, southwestern Nigeria, at the intersection of roads from Oyo to Iwere and from Abeokuta to Okaka. In the early 1860s, the Yoruba Mission opened an Anglican church in the town. The Iseyin riots of 1916 protested the ...
Isham, John: English composer and organist.
Isham, Ralph Heyward: American collector of rare manuscripts who discovered the long-missing manuscripts of James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson and other Boswell papers and letters.