Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Kirby-Smith, E. ... Kirstein, Lincoln

Kirby-Smith, E.: Confederate general during the American Civil War (1861-65) who controlled the area west of the Mississippi River for the Confederacy for almost two years after it had been severed from the rest of the South.
Kircher, Athanasius: Jesuit priest and scholar, sometimes called the last Renaissance man, important for his prodigious activity in disseminating knowledge.
Kirchhoff's circuit rules: two statements about multi-loop electric circuits that embody the laws of conservation of electric charge and energy and that are used to determine the value of the electric current in each branch of the circuit.
Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert: German physicist who, with the chemist Robert Bunsen, firmly established the theory of spectrum analysis (a technique for chemical analysis by analyzing the light emitted by a heated material), which Kirchhoff applied to determine the composition of the Sun.
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig: German painter and printmaker who was one of the leaders of a group of Expressionist artists known as Die Brucke ("The Bridge"). His mature style was highly personal and notable for its psychological tension and eroticism.
Kirchner, Nestor: Argentine lawyer and politician, who was president of Argentina from 2003.
Kirchwey, Freda: American editor and publisher, remembered for her long association with the liberal magazine The Nation.
Kireyevsky, Ivan Vasilyevich: philosopher, critic, and writer who was one of the leading ideologists of the Slavophile intellectual movement in Russia.
Kiriath-sepher: ancient town of Palestine, located near Hebron (in the Israeli-occupied West Bank). According to the Bible, the town was taken from the Canaanites either by Caleb's son-in-law Othniel or by Joshua himself. Tall Bayt Mirsham (Tell Beit Mirsim) was excavated ...
Kiribati: island country in the central Pacific Ocean. Of its 33 islands, only 20 are inhabited. The population is concentrated in the 16 Gilbert Islands, which straddle the Equator. From the Gilbert Islands, Kiribati extends 250 miles (400 km) to the ...
kirikane: in Japanese art, decorative technique used for Buddhist paintings and wooden statues and for lacquerwork. The technique used for paintings and statues employs gold or silver foil cut into thin strips or minute triangular or square pieces, which are laid ...
Kirikkale: town, central Turkey, on the Ankara-Kayseri railway near the Kizil River. Formerly a village, it owes its rapid rise in population mainly to the establishment of steel mills in the 1950s. These works, among the largest in the country, specialize ...
Kirin: sheng (province) of the Northeast region of China (formerly called Manchuria). It borders Russia to the east, North Korea to the southeast, the Chinese provinces of Liaoning to the south and Heilungkiang to the north, and the ...
Kirishima-Yaku National Park: national park in southern Kyushu island, Japan, centring on the Kirishimayama volcanic group, consisting of 23 volcanoes, 15 craters, and 10 caldera lakes. The two major peaks are the volcanic Karakunidake (5,578 feet [1,700 m]) and Takachihonomine (5,164 feet [1,574 ...
Kirishitan: (from Portuguese cristao, "Christian"), in Japanese history, a Japanese Christian or Japanese Christianity, specifically relating to Roman Catholic missionaries and converts in 16th- and 17th-century Japan. Modern Japanese Christianity is known as Kirisuto-kyo.
Kiritimati Atoll: largest island of purely coral formation in the world, having an area of 150 square miles (388 square km) and a circumference of about 100 miles (160 km). It is in the Northern Line Islands, part of Kiribati, in the ...
Kiriwina Islands: coral formations in the Solomon Sea of the southwestern Pacific, Papua New Guinea, 90 miles (145 km) north of the southeasternmost extension of the island of New Guinea. The low-lying group, all of coralline limestone and many fringed by coral ...
Kirk Range: plateau in southwestern Malawi, extending in a north-south direction and skirting the southwestern shore of Lake Nyasa and the western border of the Shire River valley. The northern scarp overlooks the Central Region Plateau, while the southern limits merge into ...
Kirk, Norman Eric: prime minister and minister of foreign affairs of New Zealand (1972-74).
Kirk, Sir John: Scottish physician, companion to explorer David Livingstone, and British administrator in Zanzibar.
Kirkcaldy: town and seaport, Fife council area and historic county, eastern Scotland, on the north shore of the Firth of Forth.
Kirkcaldy, Sir William: Scottish soldier, a leader of Scotland's Protestants in the reign of the Roman Catholic queen Mary Stuart.
Kirkcudbright: town and royal burgh (1455), Dumfries and Galloway council area, historic county of Kirkcudbrightshire, southwestern Scotland, 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Dumfries in the Galloway region. It guards the lowest crossing of the River Dee 6 miles (10 km) ...
Kirkcudbrightshire: historic county, southwestern Scotland. It lies entirely within Dumfries and Galloway council area. Kirkcudbrightshire forms the eastern portion of the historic province of Galloway. It encompasses the shores of the Solway Firth and Irish Sea between the Rivers Nith and ...
Kirkintilloch: burgh (town), East Dunbartonshire council area, historic county of Dunbartonshire, west-central Scotland, on the northeastern periphery of the metropolitan area of Glasgow. It is situated on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and the River Kelvin flows past the town. There ...
Kirkland Lake: town, Timiskaming district, eastern Ontario, Canada. It is situated 125 miles (200 km) north-northwest of North Bay. Since the discovery of gold in the vicinity in 1911, at the time of the construction of the Ontario Northland Railway, the town ...
Kirkland, Joseph: American novelist whose only work, a trilogy of Midwestern pioneer life, contributed to the development of realistic fiction.
Kirkland, Lane: American labour union leader who was president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) from 1979 to 1995.
Kirkland, Samuel: Congregational minister to the Iroquois Confederacy and negotiator of the Oneida Alliance with the colonists during the American Revolution (1775-83).
Kirklareli: city, northwestern (European) Turkey. It lies in the foothills of the Yildiz (Istranca) Mountains. Formerly called Kirk Kilise ("Forty Churches"), it developed chiefly because of its position on the shortest route over the mountains from the north to Istanbul, 100 ...
Kirklees: metropolitan borough, metropolitan county of West Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, England. The borough takes its name from Kirklees Hall (17th century), whose estate houses a small Cistercian priory (1155) and the reputed grave of Robin Hood. The borough extends ...
Kirkman, Jacob: Alsatian-born British harpsichord maker and member of a large family of instrument builders active into the 19th century.
Kirkpatrick, Jeane: American political scientist and diplomat, foreign policy adviser and ambassador to the United Nations under U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
Kirkpatrick, Ralph: American musicologist who won regard as one of the most influential harpsichordists of the 20th century.
Kirksville: city, seat of Adair county, northeastern Missouri, U.S., about 90 miles (145 km) north of Columbia, near the Chariton River. Founded about 1841 as the county seat, it was known as Long Point and Hopkinsville before being renamed for Jesse ...
Kirkuk: city, northeastern Iraq. The city is 145 miles (233 km) north of Baghdad, the national capital, with which it is linked by road and railway. Kirkuk is located near the foot of the Zagros Mountains in the Kurdistan region of ...
Kirkus, Virginia: American critic, editor, and writer, remembered for her original, and still active, book review service for booksellers.
Kirkwall: royal burgh (town), seaport, and chief town of the Orkney Islands, Scotland, off the northern tip of the Scottish mainland. It was designated a royal burgh in 1486. Early Norse influence persisted as late as the building of the 12th-century ...
Kirkwood gaps: interruptions that appear in the distribution of asteroids where the orbital period of any small body present would be a simple fraction of that of Jupiter. Several zones of low density in the minor-planet population were noticed about 1860 by ...
Kirkwood, James: American librettist, actor, author, and playwright who, together with Nicholas Dante, wrote the text for the Broadway musical A Chorus Line (1975), which in 1983 became the longest-running musical in the history of Broadway. It held the record until 1997, ...
Kirov: city and administrative centre of Kirov oblast (province), western Russia, on the Vyatka River. The city was founded as Khlynov in 1181 by traders from Novgorod and became the centre of the "Vyatka Lands," settled by Russians in the 14th ...
Kirov: oblast (province), western Russia. The oblast covers an area of 46,650 square miles (120,800 square km) and occupies almost the entire basin of the Vyatka River. It is a rolling morainic plain rising from the broad, central valley of the ...
Kirov, Sergey Mironovich: Russian Communist leader whose assassination marked the beginning of the Great Purge in the Soviet Union (1934-38).
Kirovohrad: city and administrative centre of Kirovohrad oblast (province), Ukraine. It lies along the upper Inhul River where the latter is crossed by the Kremenchuk-Odessa railway. Founded as a fortress in 1754, it was made a city, Yelizavetgrad, in 1765 and ...
Kirovohrad: oblast (province), south-central Ukraine. It extends from the Dnieper River in the northeast across the rolling hills of the Dnieper Upland to the basin of the Southern (Pivdennyy) Buh River in the southwest. The oblast's natural vegetation of grass steppe ...
Kirovsk: city, Murmansk oblast (province), northwestern Russia, at the edge of the Khibiny Mountains. Until the opening of apatite and nephelinite mines in the region in 1929, Kirovsk was merely open tundra peopled by reindeer herders. It soon became a booming ...
kirsch: dry, colourless brandy distilled from the fermented juice of the black morello cherry. Kirsch is made in the Black Forest of Germany, across the Rhine River in Alsace (France), and in the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland. Its production methods remain ...
Kirsehir: city, central Turkey. It lies along a tributary of the Kizil River at an elevation of 3,248 feet (990 m). It may have been Justinianopolis (Mocissus), which, under the 6th-century Byzantine emperor Justinian, was a major town in the ancient ...
Kirsehir rug: handwoven floor covering, usually in a prayer design and made in Kirsehir (Kirshehr), a town between Ankara and Kayseri in central Turkey. The typical Kirsehir prayer rug of the 19th century has an elaborately stepped arch above a prayer-niche design ...
Kirst, Hans Hellmut: West German novelist who wrote more than 40 popular novels, mainly political thrillers and military satires.
Kirstein, Lincoln: American dance authority, impresario, writer, and businessman who collaborated with George Balanchine to found and direct the various ballet companies that eventually became the world-renowned New York City Ballet (directed by Kirstein from 1948 to 1989). Kirstein also helped establish ...