Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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levanter ... Levy, Paul

levanter: strong wind of the western Mediterranean Sea and the southern coasts of France and Spain. It is mild, damp, and rainy and is most common in spring and fall. Its name is derived from Levant, the land at the eastern ...
Levassor, Emile: French businessman and inventor who developed the basic configuration of the automobile.
levator muscle: any of the muscles that raise a body part. In humans these include the levator anguli oris, which raises the corner of the mouth; the levator ani, collective name for a thin sheet of muscle that stretches across the pelvic ...
levee: any low ridge or earthen embankment built along the edges of a stream or river channel to prevent flooding of the adjacent land. Artificial levees are typically needed to control the flow of rivers meandering through broad, flat floodplains. Levees ...
level: device for establishing a horizontal plane. It consists of a small glass tube containing alcohol or similar liquid and an air bubble; the tube is sealed and fixed horizontally in a wooden or metallic block or frame with a smooth ...
Leveler: member of a republican and democratic faction in England during the period of the Civil Wars and Commonwealth. The name Levelers was given by enemies of the movement to suggest that its supporters wished to "level men's estates."
Leven, Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of, Lord Balgonie: commander of the Scottish army that from 1644 to 1646 fought on the side of Parliament in the English Civil Wars between Parliament and King Charles I.
Leven, Loch: lake in Perth and Kinross council area, central Scotland, at the centre of the historic county of Kinross-shire. Roughly circular in shape and about 3 miles (5 km) in diameter, it is one of the shallowest of the Scottish lochs-with ...
Levene, Phoebus: Russian-born American chemist and pioneer in the study of nucleic acids.
lever: simple machine used to amplify physical force. All early people used the lever in some form, for moving heavy stones or as digging sticks for land cultivation. The principle of the lever was used in the swape, or shaduf, a ...
Lever Art Gallery: in Port Sunlight, a model village founded for workers in Bebington, Cheshire (now in Merseyside), Eng. The museum was a gift to the public of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme, as a memorial to his wife, who died in 1913. The ...
Lever Brothers: predecessor company of Unilever (q.v.).
Lever, Charles James: Irish editor and writer whose novels, set in post-Napoleonic Ireland and Europe, featured lively, picaresque heroes.
Leverhulme, William Hesketh Lever, 1st Viscount, Baron Leverhulme of Bolton-le-moors: British soap and detergent entrepreneur who built the international firm of Lever Brothers.
Leverkusen: city, North Rhine-Westphalia Land (state), west-central Germany. It lies on the Rhine River at the mouth of the Wupper River, in the Dhunn valley, just north of Cologne. Formed in 1930 by the union of the villages ...
Levertin, Oscar Ivar: Swedish poet and scholar, a leader of the Swedish Romantic movement of the 1890s.
Levertov, Denise: English-born American poet, essayist, and political activist who wrote deceptively matter-of-fact verse on both personal and political themes.
Levesque, Rene: premier of the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec (1976-85) and a leading advocate of independence from English-speaking Canada.
Levi ben Gershom: French Jewish mathematician, philosopher, astronomer, and Talmudic scholar.
Levi Strauss & Co.: world's largest maker of pants, noted especially for its blue denim jeans called Levi's (registered trademark). It also manufactures tailored slacks, jackets, hats, shirts, skirts, and belts and licenses the manufacture of novelty items. The company is headquartered in San ...
Levi, Carlo: Italian writer, painter, and political journalist whose first documentary novel became an international literary sensation and enhanced the trend toward social realism in postwar Italian literature.
Levi, Primo: Italian-Jewish writer and chemist, noted for his restrained and moving autobiographical account of and reflections on survival in the Nazi concentration camps.
Levi, Sylvain: French Orientalist who wrote on Eastern religion, literature, and history and is particularly noted for his dictionary of Buddhism.
Levi-Civita, Tullio: Italian mathematician known for his work in differential calculus and relativity theory. At the University of Padua (1891-95), he studied under Gregorio Ricci Curbastro, with whom he later collaborated in founding the absolute differential calculus (now known as tensor analysis). ...
Levi-Montalcini, Rita: neurologist who, with biochemist Stanley Cohen, shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1986 for her discovery of a bodily substance that stimulates and influences the growth of nerve cells. She held dual citizenship in Italy and the ...
Levi-Strauss, Claude: French social anthropologist and leading exponent of structuralism, a name applied to the analysis of cultural systems (e.g., kinship and mythical systems) in terms of the structural relations among their elements. Structuralism has influenced not only 20th-century social science but ...
Leviathan: in Jewish mythology, a primordial sea serpent. Its source is in prebiblical Mesopotamian myth, especially that of the sea monster in the Ugaritic myth of Baal (see Yamm). In the Old Testament, Leviathan appears in Psalms 74:14 as a multiheaded ...
Levin, Meyer: American author of novels and nonfiction about the Jewish people and Israel.
Levinas, Emmanuel: French philosopher renowned for his powerful critique of the preeminence of ontology (the philosophical study of being) in the history of Western philosophy, particularly in the work of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976).
Levine, Jack: painter who was prominent in the American Social Realist school of the 1930s.
Levine, James: American conductor and pianist, especially noted for his work with the Metropolitan Opera of New York City.
Levine, Philip: American poet of urban working-class life.
Levinson, Salmon Oliver: lawyer who originated and publicized the "outlawry of war" movement in the United States.
levirate: custom or law decreeing a dead man's brother to be the preferred, and in rare cases the mandatory, marriage partner of the widow. The term comes from the Latin levir, meaning "husband's brother." In ancient Hebrew society, the levirate served ...
Levis-Lauzon: city, Chaudiere-Appalaches region, southern Quebec province, Canada, on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, opposite the city of Quebec, with which it is linked by ferry. The settlement, founded in 1647, was formerly called Aubigny in honour of ...
Levita, Elijah Bokher: German-born Jewish grammarian whose writings and teaching furthered the study of Hebrew in European Christendom at a time of widespread hostility toward the Jews.
levitation: rising of a human body off the ground, in apparent defiance of the law of gravity. The term designates such alleged occurrences in the lives of saints and of spiritualist mediums, generally during a seance; levitation of furniture and other ...
Levite: member of a group of clans of religious functionaries in ancient Israel who apparently were given a special religious status, conjecturally for slaughtering idolaters of the golden calf during the time of Moses (Ex. 32:25-29). They thus replaced the firstborn ...
Leviticus: ' (And He Called), the third book of the Latin Vulgate Bible, the name of which designates its contents as a book (or manual) primarily concerned with the priests and their duties. Although Leviticus is basically a book of laws, ...
Levitsky, Ivan: Ukrainian Realist novelist of the postserfdom reform period. He drew upon his background as a seminary student and, later, a provincial teacher, to depict the educated and lower classes in some of the earliest social novels in Ukrainian literature. His ...
Levitt, Helen: American photographer whose work captures the bustle, squalor, and beauty of everyday life in New York City.
Levittown: unincorporated residential community in Hempstead town (township), Nassau county, western Long Island, New York, U.S. Developed between 1946 and 1951 by the firm of Levitt and Sons, Inc., Levittown was an early example of a completely preplanned and mass-produced housing ...
Levittown: extensive, unincorporated suburban housing development in Bucks county, eastern Pennsylvania, U.S., near the big bend of the Delaware River, approximately midway between Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey. It was built between 1951 and 1958 by Levitt & Sons, Inc., who ...
Levka Mountains: highest and most precipitous massif in western Crete, located a few miles south of the Cretan capital, Khania (Canea), in the nomos (department) of Khania, Greece. The limestone peaks have been hollowed out by erosion into high plains such as ...
Levni, Abdulcelil: the most accomplished and famous Ottoman painter of the early 18th-century "Tulip Period."
Levon I: king of Armenia (reigned 1199-1219), who rallied the Armenians after their dispersion by the Seljuq Turks and consolidated the kingdom in Cilicia, southeastern Asia Minor. Through his friendly relations with the German emperors Frederick I Barbarossa and Henry VI, he ...
Levski, Vasil: Bulgarian revolutionary leader in the struggle for liberation of Bulgaria from Ottoman rule.
Levuka: town on the east coast of Ovalau island, central Fiji, South Pacific, and capital of Lomaiviti Province at the western edge of the country's Eastern Division. Settled by a U.S. adventurer in 1822, the area was the centre of a ...
Levy, David: Israeli politician, who was a leader of Israel's Sephardic Jews and who held numerous government offices.
Levy, Joseph Moses: English newspaperman, founder of the London newspaper Daily Telegraph.
Levy, Paul: French mining engineer and mathematician noted for his work in the theory of probability.