Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

0-9

Petit porcelain ... Petrucci, Ottaviano dei

Petit porcelain: French hard-paste porcelain produced by Jacob Petit (b. 1796). Petit worked at the porcelain factory at Sevres as a painter. With his brother Mardochee he bought a porcelain factory in Fontainebleau in 1830, finally settling in Paris in 1863. The ...
Petit, Roland: French dancer and choreographer whose dramatic ballets combined fantasy with elements of contemporary realism.
petition: written instrument directed to some individual, official, legislative body, or court in order to redress a grievance or to request the granting of a favour. Petitions are also used to collect signatures to enable a candidate to get on a ...
Petitot, Jean: Swiss painter who was the first great miniature portraitist in enamel.
Petlyura, Symon Vasilyevich: socialist leader of Ukraine's unsuccessful fight for independence following the Russian revolutions of 1917.
PETN: a highly explosive organic compound belonging to the same chemical family as nitroglycerin-i.e., the nitric acid esters of polyalcohols.
Peto, John Frederick: American still-life painter who, though influenced by the style and subject matter of the better-known trompe l'oeil ("fool-the-eye") still-life painter William Harnett, developed a distinctive mode of expression.
Petofi, Sandor: one of the greatest Hungarian poets and a revolutionary who symbolized the Hungarian desire for freedom.
Petoskey: resort city, seat (1853) of Emmet county, northwestern Michigan, U.S., on Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan, 67 miles (108 km) northeast of Traverse City. Settled in 1852 and named for the Ottawa chief Pet-o-sega, it was the site of ...
Petra: ancient city, centre of an Arab kingdom in Hellenistic and Roman times; its ruins are in southwest Jordan. The city was built on a terrace, pierced from east to west by the Wadi Musa (the Valley of Moses)-one of the ...
Petrakis, Harry Mark: American novelist and short-story writer whose exuberant and sensitive works deal with the lives of Greek immigrants in urban America.
Petralona skull: an ancient human cranium discovered in 1960 in a cave near Thessaloniki, northeastern Greece. The age of this skull has been difficult to establish. At first it was believed to be contemporary with Neanderthals, perhaps no older than 120,000 years. ...
Petrarch: Italian scholar, poet, and Humanist whose poems addressed to Laura, an idealized beloved, contributed to the Renaissance flowering of lyric poetry. Petrarch's inquiring mind and love of classical authors led him to travel, visiting men of learning and searching monastic ...
Petrassi, Goffredo: one of the most influential Italian composers of the 20th century. He is known for incorporating various avant-garde techniques into a highly personal style.
Petre, Sir Edward, 2nd Baronet: English Jesuit, favourite of King James II of Great Britain.
petrel: any of a number of seabirds of the order Procellariiformes, particularly certain members of the family Procellariidae, which also includes the fulmars and the shearwaters. Members of the family Hydrobatidae are increasingly called storm petrels; those of the Pelecanoididae are ...
Petri, Elio: Italian motion picture director and screenwriter.
Petri, Laurentius: Lutheran churchman, a leader of the Protestant Reformation in Sweden and the first Protestant archbishop of Uppsala (1531-73).
Petri, Olaus: Lutheran churchman who, with his brother Laurentius, played a decisive role in the reformation of the Swedish church.
Petrie, Sir Flinders: British archaeologist and Egyptologist who made valuable contributions to the techniques and methods of field excavation and invented a sequence dating method that made possible the reconstruction of history from the remains of ancient cultures. He was knighted in 1923.
Petrified Forest National Park: desert area containing plant and animal fossils and archaeological sites in eastern Arizona, U.S., 19 miles (30 km) east of Holbrook. Established as a national monument in 1906 and as a national park in 1962, it occupies an area of ...
petrified wood: fossil formed by the invasion of minerals into cavities between and within cells of natural wood, usually by silica (silicon dioxide, SiO₂) or calcite (calcium carbonate, CaCO₃). The petrified forests of the western United States are silicified wood, the tree ...
Petrillo, James C: American labour leader who served as president of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) from 1940 to 1958.
Petrine theory: the basis of Roman Catholic doctrine on papal primacy, resting partly on Christ's bestowing the "keys of the Kingdom" on Peter (the first pope, according to Roman Catholic tradition) and partly on Christ's words: "And I tell you, you are ...
Petrobras: Brazilian company that was founded in 1953 as a government-owned monopoly to prospect, extract, and refine domestic petroleum and to transport that oil and its derivatives. Petrobras is an operating company overseen by the National Petroleum Council (Conselho Nacional do ...
petrochemical: in the strictest sense, any of a large group of chemicals (as distinct from fuels) derived from petroleum and natural gas and used for a variety of commercial purposes. The definition, however, has been broadened to include the whole range ...
Petrodvorets: city, Leningrad oblast (province), northwestern Russia. It lies on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, 18 miles (29 km) southwest of the city of St. Petersburg. Peter I the Great founded Peterhof in 1709 as a country estate. ...
Petrofina SA: major Belgian petroleum conglomerate, engaged in the exploration for and production of crude oil, oil refining, and petrochemical production. Its headquarters are in Brussels.
Petroglyph National Monument: archaeological site featuring some 25,000 prehistoric and historic petroglyphs (rock carvings), central New Mexico, U.S. It is situated on the west side of Albuquerque, near the Rio Grande. In addition to the petroglyphs, there are hundreds of archaeological sites (including ...
Petroleos de Venezuela, SA: state-owned Venezuelan company created through the nationalization of the petroleum industry on Jan. 1, 1976. It earns the largest share of Venezuela's foreign exchange. Its headquarters are in Caracas.
Petroleos Mexicanos: state-owned Mexican company, a producer, refiner, and distributor of oil, natural gas, and petroleum derivatives. Pemex is the largest Latin American oil company. Its headquarters are in Mexico City.
petroleum: complex mixture of hydrocarbons that occur in the Earth in liquid, gaseous, or solid forms. The term is often restricted to the liquid form, commonly called crude oil, but as a technical term it also includes natural gas and the ...
petroleum engineering: the branch of engineering that involves the development and exploitation of crude oil and natural gas fields as well as the technical analysis and forecasting of their future performance. Its origins lie in both mining engineering and geology. The petroleum ...
petroleum engineering: field of engineering that involves the optimized development and exploitation of crude oil and natural gas fields, as well as the technical analysis and forecasting of these fields' future performance. In general, petroleum engineers are not involved in the exploration ...
petroleum jelly: translucent, yellowish to amber or white, unctuous substance having almost no odour or taste, derived from petroleum and used principally in medicine and pharmacy as a protective dressing and as a substitute for fats in ointments and cosmetics. It is ...
petroleum production: recovery of crude oil and, often, associated natural gas from the Earth.
petroleum refining: conversion of crude oil into useful products.
petroleum trap: subsurface reservoir of petroleum. The oil is always accompanied by water and often by natural gas; all are confined in porous rock, usually such sedimentary rocks as sands, sandstones, arkoses, and fissured limestones and dolomites. The natural gas, being lightest, ...
petroleum wax: any wax obtained from petroleum, including paraffin wax, microcrystalline wax, and petroleum jelly (qq.v.). By comparison, animal and vegetable waxes are generally higher in cost, of varying chemical constitution, and of uncertain availability and have thus been largely displaced by ...
Petrolina: city, southwestern Pernambuco estado ("state"), northeastern Brazil. It lies on the left (north) bank of the Sao Francisco River, just across from Juazeiro, in Bahia state, with which it is linked by bridge. Petrolina is the northern ...
Petrolini, Ettore: Italian theatrical actor and author, creator of numerous caricature sketches, and inventor of a revolutionary and anticonformist way of performing.
petrology: scientific study of rocks that deals with their composition, texture, and structure; their occurrence and distribution; and their origin in relation to physicochemical conditions and geologic processes. It is concerned with all three major types of rocks-igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary. ...
Petronas Twin Towers: pair of skyscraper office buildings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that are among the world's tallest buildings. The Twin Towers, built to house the headquarters of Petronas, the national petroleum company of Malaysia, were designed by the Argentine-born American architect Cesar ...
Petronius Arbiter, Gaius: reputed author of the Satyricon, a literary portrait of Roman society of the 1st century AD.
Petropavlovsk: city, northern Kazakhstan. It lies along the Esil (Ishim) River in the centre of the Esil Steppe. Petropavlovsk was founded as a Russian fort in 1752 and soon became an important centre of trade between Russia and Central Asia and ...
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky: port and administrative centre of Kamchatka oblast (region), far eastern Russia. It lies along the landlocked Avachinskaya Gulf, on the Pacific coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The city was founded in 1740 during Vitus Bering's second Kamchatka ...
Petropolis: city, central Rio de Janeiro estado (state), southeastern Brazil. It is situated in a valley at 2,667 feet (813 metres) above sea level, in the Orgaos Mountains, about 25 miles (40 km) north of Rio de Janeiro ...
Petrosani: city, Hunedoara judet (county), west-central Romania, situated on a tributary of the Jiu River. Founded in the 17th century, it is the principal city and cultural centre for the upper Jiu Valley coalfield. It has a theatre and a museum ...
Petrosyan, Tigran Vartanovich: Soviet Armenian chess master who won the world championship from Mikhail Botvinnik in 1963, defended it successfully against Boris Spassky in 1966, and was defeated by Spassky in 1969. Petrosyan's play, subtle and tirelessly patient, was designed to weaken an ...
Petrozavodsk: city and capital of Karelia, northwestern Russia, situated on the western shore of Lake Onega, south of the Shuya River outflow. The city was founded in 1703 by Peter I the Great as an ironworks to supply ordnance to his ...
Petrucci, Ottaviano dei: Italian music printer whose collection of chansons, Harmonice Musices Odhecaton A (1501), was the first polyphonic music printed from movable type.