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biosphere

(Encyclopedia)biosphere, irregularly shaped envelope of the earth's air, water, and land encompassing the heights and depths at which living things exist. The biosphere is a closed and self-regulating system (see e...

Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart

(Encyclopedia)Blackett, Patrick Maynard Stuart blăkˈĭt [key], 1897–1974, English physicist. He was professor of physics at the Univ. of Manchester (1937–53) and in 1953 became professor at the Univ. of Londo...

nuclear reactor

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Power reactor system nuclear reactor, device for producing controlled release of nuclear energy. Reactors can be used for research or for power production. A research reactor is designed to pr...

physics

(Encyclopedia)physics, branch of science traditionally defined as the study of matter, energy, and the relation between them; it was called natural philosophy until the late 19th cent. and is still known by this na...

Tanaka, Koichi

(Encyclopedia)Tanaka, Koichi, 1959–, Japanese engineer, B.S. Tohoku Univ., 1983. He has been a researcher at Shimadzu Corporation in Kyoto, Japan, since 1983. Tanaka shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with ...

Shmyhal, Denys Anatoliyovych

(Encyclopedia)Shmyhal or Shmygal, Denys Anatoliyovych, 1975–, Ukrainian politician. An engineer and economist, he worked in the private sector (1995–2009), then served in the state administration for Lviv Oblas...

Simon, William Edward

(Encyclopedia)Simon, William Edward, 1927–2000, U.S. secretary of the treasury (1974–77), b. Paterson, N.J. He served (1946–48) in the U.S. army in Japan, graduated from Lafayette College (1952), and became a...

Olson, Charles

(Encyclopedia)Olson, Charles, 1910–70, American critic and poet, b. Worcester, Mass., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1932; M.A., 1933). His literary reputation was established with Call Me Ishmael (1947), a study of the in...

Perry, Rick

(Encyclopedia)Perry, Rick (James Richard Perry), 1950–, American politician, governor of Texas (2000–2015), b. Haskell, Tex. A fifth-generation Texan from the state's agricultural western plains, he attended Te...

Rainwater, James

(Encyclopedia)Rainwater, James, 1917–86, American physicist, Ph.D. Columbia, 1946. After working on the Manhattan Project as a student during World War II, he became a professor of physics at Columbia in 1952. Hi...