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Bloch, Felix

(Encyclopedia)Bloch, Felix, 1905–83, American physicist, b. Zürich, Switzerland, Ph.D. Univ. of Leipzig, Germany, 1928. He was a professor at Stanford from 1934 until his retirement in 1971. Bloch and Edward Pur...

joule

(Encyclopedia)joule jo͞ol, joul [key], abbr. J, unit of work or energy in the mks system of units, which is based on the metric system; it is the work done or energy expended by a force of 1 newton acting through ...

Office of Strategic Services

(Encyclopedia)Office of Strategic Services (OSS), U.S. agency created (1942) during World War II under the jurisdiction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the purpose of obtaining information about enemy nations and ...

Office of War Information

(Encyclopedia)Office of War Information (OWI), U.S. agency created (1942) during World War II to consolidate government information services. The OWI absorbed the functions of the Office of Facts and Figures, the O...

beta particle

(Encyclopedia)beta particle, one of the three types of radiation resulting from natural radioactivity. Beta radiation (or beta rays) was identified and named by E. Rutherford, who found that it consists of high-spe...

adenosine triphosphate

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) adenosine triphosphate (ATP) ədĕnˈəsēn trīˌfŏsˈfāt [key], organic compound composed of adenine, the sugar ribose, and three phosphate groups. ATP serves ...

cosmology

(Encyclopedia)cosmology, area of science that aims at a comprehensive theory of the structure and evolution of the entire physical universe. The earliest pre-Ptolemaic theories assumed that the earth was the cent...

periodic table

(Encyclopedia)CE5 periodic table, chart of the elements arranged according to the periodic law discovered by Dmitri I. Mendeleev and revised by Henry G. J. Moseley. In the periodic table the elements are arrange...

cold fusion

(Encyclopedia)cold fusion or low-temperature fusion, nuclear fusion of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, at or relatively near room temperature. Fusion, the reaction involved in the release of the destructive ener...

Purcell, Edward Mills

(Encyclopedia)Purcell, Edward Mills, 1912–97, American physicist, b. Taylorville, Ill., Ph.D. Harvard, 1938. During World War II, Purcell was a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation La...