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Armstrong, Neil Alden

(Encyclopedia)Armstrong, Neil Alden, 1930–2012, American astronaut, b. Wapakoneta, Ohio, grad. Purdue Univ. (B.S., 1955), Univ. of Southern California (M.S., 1970). A U.S. Navy fighter pilot during the Korean War...

presbytery

(Encyclopedia)presbytery prĕzˈbĭtĕrˌē, prĕsˈ– [key], in architecture, the space in the eastern end of a church reserved for the higher clergy. It was also known in the early Christian Church as the apse, ...

McDonnell, James Smith

(Encyclopedia)McDonnell, James Smith, 1899–1980, American aviation pioneer, b. Denver, B.S. Princeton, 1921, M.S. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1925. He designed the Doodlebug (1929), a small monoplane, ...

parity

(Encyclopedia)parity or space parity, in physics, quantity that refers to the relationship between an object or process and the image that it can produce in a mirror. For example, any right-handed object will produ...

Gagarin, Yuri Alekseyevich

(Encyclopedia)Gagarin, Yuri Alekseyevich yo͞oˈrē əlyĭksyāˈyəvĭch gägäˈrĭn [key], 1934–68, Russian astronaut (cosmonaut), b. near Gzhatsk, RSFSR. He was the first in history to be rocketed into orbita...

More, Henry

(Encyclopedia)More, Henry, 1614–87, English philosopher, one of the foremost representatives of the school of Cambridge Platonists. His writings emphasized the mystical and theosophic phases of that philosophy, a...

Leonov, Aleksei Arkhipovich

(Encyclopedia)Leonov, Aleksei Arkhipovich ŭlˌyĭksyāˈ ärkhˌyĭpôˈvyĭch [key], 1934–2019, Soviet-Russian cosmonaut and military officer. While serving as copilot of Voskhod 2 (Mar. 18–19, 1964), he beca...

Burbidge, Margaret

(Encyclopedia)Burbidge, Margaret, 1925–2020, Anglo-American astronomer, b. England as Eleanor Margaret Peachey. Burbidge; her husband, Geoffrey Burbidge; William Fowler; and Sir Fred Hoyle showed (1956) how heavi...

plane

(Encyclopedia)plane, in mathematics, flat surface of infinite extent but no thickness. An example of a plane, or more exactly of a bounded portion of a plane, is the surface forming one face, or side, of a cube. A ...

X Prize Foundation

(Encyclopedia)X Prize Foundation, private, nonprofit prize institute est. 1995 by commercial space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis. Based in Santa Monica, Calif., and funded by foundations and private individuals and ...