Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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kittiwake ... Klein, Felix

kittiwake: (Rissa tridactyla), oceanic gull, a white bird with pearl-gray mantle, black-tipped wings, black feet, and yellow bill. It nests on the North and South Atlantic coasts. Kittiwakes have evolved a number of behavioral and structural modifications for nesting on narrow ...
Kittredge, George Lyman: American literary scholar and teacher, one of the foremost authorities of his time on the writings of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Sir Thomas Malory.
Kitty Hawk: town, Dare county, northeastern North Carolina, U.S. It lies on Bodie Island, a narrow sand barrier (one of the Outer Banks) facing the Atlantic Ocean opposite Albemarle Sound. Immediately south at Kill Devil Hills is Wright Brothers National Memorial (1927; ...
Kitwe: city, northern Zambia, southern Africa. It is the third largest city in Zambia and is the main industrial and commercial centre of the copper-belt region. Founded in 1936, Kitwe grew with the rapid development of copper mining, though secondary industries ...
Kitzbuhel: town, Bundesland (federal province) Tirol, western Austria, in the Kitzbuhel Alps, at the southern foot of the Kitzbuheler Horn (6,548 ft [1,998 m]). First mentioned in 1165 and chartered in 1271, it was held by the bishops of Regensburg and ...
Kitzbuhel Alps: range of the Eastern Alps in western Austria extending for 40 mi (65 km) between the Ziller (west) and Saalach (east) rivers. The highest points in the range are the Kreuzjoch (8,392 ft [2,558 m]) in the west and the ...
kiva: subterranean ceremonial and social chamber found in the Pueblo American Indian villages of the southwestern United States, particularly notable for the colourful mural paintings decorating the walls.
kivela: (Zulu: "to climb"), popular urban dance music of South Africa. Coined by Elkin Sithole in the 1940s to refer to choral response in Zulu vocal music, the term kivela had been broadened by the 1950s to refer to the music ...
Kivi, Aleksis: father of the Finnish novel and drama and the creator of Finland's modern literary language.
Kivu, Lake: one of the great lakes of East Africa, situated between Congo (Kinshasa) to the west and Rwanda to the east. Lying at 4,790 feet (1,460 m) above sea level, it occupies 1,040 square miles (2,700 square km) and is 55 ...
Kiwanis International: worldwide community-service organization for men and women that was founded in Detroit, Mich., in 1915. In the late 20th century it had more than 300,000 members in about 8,000 clubs and 70 countries. The members of Kiwanis International seek to ...
kiwi: any of three species of flightless birds belonging to the genus Apteryx and found in New Zealand. The name is a Maori word referring to the shrill call of the male. Kiwis are grayish brown birds the size of a ...
kiwi: edible fruit of the vine Actinidia chinensis (family Actinidiaceae). The plant is native to China and Taiwan and is now grown commercially in New Zealand and California. The egg-shaped kiwi fruit has a furry brownish green skin and firm, translucent ...
Kizel: city, Perm oblast (province), west-central Russia. It lies on the western slope of the Ural Mountains, along the Kizel River. Founded in 1788, it developed in the 1890s following the construction of the railway to Perm and became a city ...
Kizer, Carolyn: American poet whose work reflects her involvement in feminist and human rights activities. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1985 for her collection Yin: New Poems (1984).
Kizhi Island: island in Lake Onega, Karelia republic, northwestern Russia. The island, whose name originates from kizharsuari ("island of games"), was located on the important 14th-century trade route from the town of Novgorod to the White Sea. The settlement grew around the ...
Kizil Adalar: group of nine islands (adalar) in the Sea of Marmara a few miles southeast of Istanbul; they are part of Turkey. There are permanent inhabitants on the smallest island, Sedef Adasi (ancient Antirobethos), and on the four larger islands, Buyukada ...
Kizil River: river, the longest wholly within Turkey. It rises in the Kizil Mountains (kizil, "red") in north-central Anatolia at an elevation of about 6,500 feet (1,980 m) and flows southwest, past the towns of Zara and Sivas. It then turns northward ...
Kizilbash: ("Red Head"), any member of the seven Turkmen tribes who wore red caps to signify their support of the founders of the Safavid dynasty (1501-1736) in Iran. The name was given to them by Sunnite Turks and was applied later ...
Kizzuwadna: Hurrian kingdom of southeastern Anatolia near the Gulf of Iskenderun in present-day Turkey. Kizzuwadna concluded a treaty with the Hittite kingdom in the late 16th century BC and remained a major independent power until after 1340 BC, when it was ...
Kjeldahl method: in analytical chemistry, procedure widely used for estimating the nitrogen content of foodstuffs, fertilizers, and other substances, invented in 1883 by a Danish chemist, Johan G.C.T. Kjeldahl. The method consists essentially of transforming all nitrogen in a weighed sample into ...
Kjellen, Rudolf: Swedish political scientist and politician whose conservative theory of the state was influential beyond the borders of Sweden.
Klabund: Expressionist poet, playwright, and novelist who influenced German literature with his adaptations of Oriental literature. Notable among his free, imaginative renderings of Chinese, Japanese, and Persian literature are Li-tai-pe (1916), Lao-tse (1921), and Der Kreidekreis (1924; The Circle of Chalk), ...
Kladno: mining city, Stredocesky kraj (region), Czech Republic, northwest of Prague. The two original forest villages of Kladno and Bustehrad developed after 1842 as the industrial centre of the Kladno hard-coal basin. There are local deposits of iron, but most is ...
Klafsky, Katharina: Hungarian dramatic soprano known for her interpretations of roles in Richard Wagner's operas.
Klagenfurt: city, capital of Karnten Bundesland (federal state), southern Austria. It lies along the Glan River in a basin east of Worther Lake and north of the Karawanken Mountains. Founded in the 12th century and chartered in 1279, it passed to ...
Klages, Ludwig: German psychologist and philosopher, distinguished in the field of characterology. He was also a founder of modern graphology (handwriting analysis).
Klaipeda: city and port, Lithuania. It lies on the narrow channel by which the Courland Lagoon and Neman (Lithuanian: Nemunas; German: Memel) River connect with the Baltic Sea. Beside a small earlier settlement, the local population constructed a fortress in the ...
Klaj, Johann: German poet who helped make mid-17th-century Nurnberg a centre of German literature.
Klamath Falls: city, seat (1882) of Klamath county, southern Oregon, U.S. It lies at the southern end of Upper Klamath Lake, in the foothills of the Cascade Range. Once the territory of Klamath, Pit River, and Warm Springs Indians, the area was ...
Klamath Mountains: segment of the Pacific mountain system (q.v.) of western North America. The range extends southward for about 250 miles (400 km) from the foothills south of the Willamette Valley in southwestern Oregon, U.S., to the northwestern side of the Central ...
Klamath River: river rising in Upper Klamath Lake just above Klamath Falls, Ore., U.S. It flows south for 1.25 miles (2 km) as the Link River to Lake Ewauna, where it emerges as the Klamath River, and continues generally southwesterly 250 miles ...
Klammer, Franz: Austrian Alpine skier who specialized in the downhill event, winning 25 World Cup downhill races in his career. He won the gold medal in the downhill event at the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria.
Klang: city and port, west-central Peninsular (West) Malaysia. It lies on the Kelang River and the 40-mile (64-km) Kuala Lumpur-Port Kelang railway. The city is an administrative centre of a rubber- and fruit-growing district. During the 19th-century tin rush, Klang served ...
Klapka, Gyorgy: soldier and Hungarian nationalist, one of the leaders in the revolutionary war of 1848-49.
Klaproth, Heinrich Julius: German Orientalist and explorer whose major work, Asia polyglotta nebst Sprachatlas (1823; "Asia Polyglotta with Language Atlas"), is one of the important early surveys of Oriental languages, notably the Caucasian languages, and is the only source of information on several ...
Klaproth, Martin Heinrich: German chemist who discovered uranium (1789), zirconium (1789), and cerium (1803). He described them as distinct elements, though he did not obtain them in the pure metallic state.
Klarsfeld, Beate and Serge: wife-and-husband team resident in Paris, internationally noted for their anti-Nazi and pro-Israel activities.
Klasies: site of paleoanthropological excavations carried out since the late 1960s within a complex of South African coastal caves. Usually referred to as Klasies River Mouth, the site has yielded some of the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens.
Klaus, Karl Karlovich: Russian chemist (of German origin) credited with the discovery of ruthenium in 1844.
Kle: town, western Liberia. It is a traditional trading centre among the Gola people. The B.F. Goodrich Company, Liberia, Inc., established a plantation, hospital, power plant, housing, schools, and roads to the west of the town, which began producing rubber in ...
Kleber, Jean-Baptiste: French general of the Revolutionary wars who suppressed the counterrevolutionary uprising in the Vendee area of western France in 1793. He later played a prominent role in Napoleon Bonaparte's Egyptian campaign (1798-1800).
Klebs, Edwin: German physician and bacteriologist noted for his work on the bacterial theory of infection. With Friedrich August Johannes Loffler in 1884, he discovered the diphtheria bacillus, known as the Klebs-Loffler bacillus.
Klebsiella: genus of rod-shaped bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae. Klebsiella organisms are categorized microbiologically as gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, nonmotile bacteria. Klebsiella pneumoniae, also called Friedlander's bacillus, can infect the human respiratory tract and cause pneumonia, although the disease is usually seen ...
Klee, Paul: Swiss painter who was one of the foremost artists of the 20th century.
Kleene, Stephen Cole: American mathematician and logician whose work on recursion theory helped lay the foundations of theoretical computer science.
Kleiber, Erich: Austrian conductor who performed many 20th-century works but was especially known for his performances of works by W.A. Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, and Richard Strauss and for his fidelity to composers' intentions.
Klein bottle: topological space, named for the German mathematician Felix Klein, obtained by identifying two ends of a cylindrical surface in the direction opposite that is necessary to obtain a torus. The surface is not constructible in three-dimensional Euclidean space but has ...
Klein, A.M.: Canadian poet whose verse reflects his strong involvement with Jewish culture and history. He was a member of the Montreal group, a coterie of poets who broke with the tradition of nature poetry then popular.
Klein, Calvin: American fashion designer noted for his womenswear, menswear, cosmetics, bed and bath linens, and other designer collections.
Klein, Felix: German mathematician whose unified view of geometry as the study of the properties of a space that are invariant under a given group of transformations, known as the Erlanger Programm, profoundly influenced mathematical developments.