elegiac stanza, in poetry, a quatrain in iambic pentameter with alternate lines rhyming. Though the older and more general term for this is heroic stanza, the form became associated specifically with elegiac poetry when Thomas Gray used it to perfection in “An Elegy Written in a Country Church

Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty: …city and village life in Elegie auf einen Dorfkirchhof and Elegie auf einen Stadtkirchhof (both 1771; “Elegy on a Village Churchyard” and “Elegy on a City Churchyard”). He loved the Volkslied (“folk song”); his sense of closeness to the peasants, delight in nature, and longing for the simple and natural…

Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty: …Elegie auf einen Dorfkirchhof and Elegie auf einen Stadtkirchhof (both 1771; “Elegy on a Village Churchyard” and “Elegy on a City Churchyard”). He loved the Volkslied (“folk song”); his sense of closeness to the peasants, delight in nature, and longing for the simple and natural life find skillful expression in…

Douglas Dunn: Dunn’s highly praised Elegies (1985) contains moving unflinching poems on the death of his first wife in 1981. The volume was awarded the Whitbread Book Award (now the Costa Book Award) for poetry. Northlight (1988) marks Dunn’s return to social subjects. Dante’s Drum-Kit (1993) consists of poems written…

Chuci, compendium of ancient Chinese poetic songs from the southern state of Chu during the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 bce). The poems were collected in the 2nd century ce by Wang Yi, an imperial librarian during the latter part of the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). Many of the poems are attributed to

Dennis Hopper: … (1994) and a poet in Elegy (2008).

elegy, meditative lyric poem lamenting the death of a public personage or of a friend or loved one; by extension, any reflective lyric on the broader theme of human mortality. In classical literature an elegy was simply any poem written in the elegiac metre (alternating lines of dactylic hexameter

John Banville: Benjamin Black books and mystery series: … (2006), The Silver Swan (2007), Elegy for April (2010), A Death in Summer (2011), Vengeance (2012), Holy Orders (2013), and Even the Dead (2015). The eighth installment, April in Spain (2021), was released under Banville’s name. Other Benjamin Black books include The Black-Eyed Blonde (2014), which

Giovanni Boccaccio: Early works: …in terza rima; the prose Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta (1343–44); and the poem Il ninfale fiesolano (perhaps 1344–45; “Tale of the Fiesole Nymph”), in ottava rima, on the love of the shepherd Africo for the nymph Mensola.

Dallán Forgaill: …the Amra Choluim Chille, or Elegy of St. Columba, one of the earliest Irish poems of any length. The poem was composed after St. Columba’s death in the alliterative, accentual poetic form of the period, in stanzas of irregular length. It has survived in the language of later transcripts; its…

An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard, meditative poem written in iambic pentameter quatrains by Thomas Gray, published in 1751. A meditation on unused human potential, the conditions of country life, and mortality, An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard is one of the best-known elegies in

Ilona Elek was a Hungarian fencer who was the first woman to win two Olympic gold medals in the individual foil competition. In addition to her success in the Olympics, Elek was the world champion in women’s foil in 1934, 1935, and 1951. Did You Know? Ilona Elek was the first woman to win two

Elektra, American comic strip superhero created for Marvel Comics by writer and artist Frank Miller. The character first appeared in Daredevil no. 168 (January 1981). Elektra Natchios was introduced as the college love of Matt Murdock, alter ego of the crime fighter Daredevil. She retreats from her

Richard Strauss: Life: In 1909 the opera Elektra marked Strauss’s first collaboration with the Austrian poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Strauss wrote the music and Hofmannsthal the libretti for five more operas over the next 20 years. With the 1911 premiere of their second opera together, Der Rosenkavalier, they achieved a…

David Adjaye: Elektra House and Dirty House (2000 and 2002, respectively, both in London)—two of the most well-known examples of the private residences he designed—had dark exteriors, were stark and modernistic, and provided the perfect milieu for the artists who lived in them. His Idea Stores were…

Elektra Records: Village Folk to “Riders on the Storm”: Formed in 1950 by Jac Holzman, who initially ran it from his dormitory at St. John’s College, in Annapolis, Maryland, Elektra became one of the top folk labels alongside Vanguard, Folkways, and Prestige. Simply recorded albums by Jean Ritchie, Josh White, and Theodore Bikel achieved…

Formed in 1950 by Jac Holzman, who initially ran it from his dormitory at St. John’s College, in Annapolis, Maryland, Elektra became one of the top folk labels alongside Vanguard, Folkways, and Prestige. Simply recorded albums by Jean Ritchie, Josh White, and Theodore Bikel achieved substantial

electron microscope: History: …notably recorded in Ardenne’s book Elektronen-Übermikroskopie (1940). Further progress in the construction of electron microscopes was delayed during World War II but received an impetus in 1946 with the invention of the stigmator, which compensates for astigmatism of the objective lens, after which production became more widespread.

Elektrostal, city, Moscow oblast (province), western Russia. It lies 36 miles (58 km) east of Moscow city. The name, meaning “electric steel,” derives from the high-quality-steel industry established there soon after the October Revolution in 1917. During World War II, parts of the

rare-earth element: …the first extended row of elements below the main body of the periodic table (cerium [Ce] through lutetium [Lu]). The elements cerium through lutetium are called the lanthanides, but many scientists also, though incorrectly, call those elements rare earths.

set theory: The objects are called elements or members of the set.

fermium (Fm), synthetic chemical element of the actinoid series of the periodic table, atomic number 100. Fermium (as the isotope fermium-255) is produced by the intense neutron irradiation of uranium-238 and was first positively identified by American chemist Albert Ghiorso and coworkers at

mendelevium (Md), synthetic chemical element of the actinoid series of the periodic table, atomic number 101. It was the first element to be synthesized and discovered a few atoms at a time. Not occurring in nature, mendelevium (as the isotope mendelevium-256) was discovered (1955) by American

nobelium (No), synthetic chemical element of the actinoid series of the periodic table, atomic number 102. The element was named after Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel. Not occurring in nature, nobelium was first claimed by an international team of scientists working at the Nobel Institute of Physics

lawrencium (Lr), synthetic chemical element, the 14th member of the actinoid series of the periodic table, atomic number 103. Not occurring in nature, lawrencium (probably as the isotope lawrencium-257) was first produced (1961) by chemists Albert Ghiorso, T. Sikkeland, A.E. Larsh, and R.M. Latimer

rutherfordium (Rf), an artificially produced radioactive transuranium element in Group IVb of the periodic table, atomic number 104. Soviet scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna, Russia, U.S.S.R., announced in 1964 the discovery of element 104, which they named

dubnium (Db), an artificially produced radioactive transuranium element in Group Vb of the periodic table, atomic number 105. The discovery of dubnium (element 105), like that of rutherfordium (element 104), has been a matter of dispute between Soviet and American scientists. The Soviets may have

seaborgium (Sg), an artificially produced radioactive element in Group VIb of the periodic table, atomic number 106. In June 1974, Georgy N. Flerov of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna, Russia, U.S.S.R., announced that his team of investigators had synthesized and identified element

bohrium (Bh), a synthetic element in Group VIIb of the periodic table. It is thought to be chemically similar to the rare metal rhenium. In 1976 Soviet scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, U.S.S.R., announced that they had synthesized element 107, later given the

hassium (Hs), an artificially produced element belonging to the transuranium group, atomic number 108. It was synthesized and identified in 1984 by West German researchers at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung [GSI]) in Darmstadt. On the basis of its

meitnerium (Mt), an artificially produced element belonging to the transuranium group, atomic number 109. It is predicted to have chemical properties resembling those of iridium. The element is named in honour of Austrian-born physicist Lise Meitner. In 1982 West German physicists at the Institute

darmstadtium (Ds), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 110. In 1995 scientists at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung [GSI]) in Darmstadt, Germany, announced the formation of atoms of element 110 when lead-208 was fused with nickel-62.

roentgenium (Rg), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 111. In 1994 scientists at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung [GSI]) in Darmstadt, Ger., formed atoms of element 111 when atoms of bismuth-209 were bombarded with atoms of

copernicium (Cn), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 112. In 1996 scientists at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research (Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung [GSI]) in Darmstadt, Ger., announced the production of atoms of copernicium from fusing zinc-70 with lead-208. The

nihonium (Nh), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 113. In 2004 scientists at the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science in Saitama, Japan announced the production of one atom of element 113, which was formed when bismuth-209 was fused with zinc-70. Extremely

flerovium (Fl), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 114. In 1999 scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, produced atoms of flerovium from colliding atoms of calcium-48

moscovium (Mc), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 115. In 2010 scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, U.S., announced the production of four atoms of moscovium when

livermorium (Lv), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 116. In 2000 scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, announced the production of atoms of livermorium when

tennessine (Ts), artificially produced transuranium element of atomic number 117. In 2010 Russian and American scientists announced the production of six atoms of tennessine, which were formed when 22 milligrams of berkelium-249 were bombarded with atoms of calcium-48, at the cyclotron at the Joint

oganesson (Og), a transuranium element that occupies position 118 in the periodic table and is one of the noble gases. Oganesson is a synthetic element, and in 1999 scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, announced the production of atoms of oganesson as a

transuranium element: Other heavy elements: Element 119 is expected to be a typical alkali metal with a +1 oxidation state. The energetic properties of its valence electron, the 8s electron, suggest that its first ionization potential will be higher than the oxidation potential predicted by simple extrapolation, so that the…

transuranium element: Other heavy elements: Element 120 is expected to be a typical alkaline-earth element. As with element 119, the ionization energies should be higher than the normal family trend would indicate and should make the metallic and ionic radii smaller. These changes should make the chemistry of element 120…

Lars von Trier: …crime film Forbrydelsens element (1984; The Element of Crime), the first in an eventual series known as the Europa trilogy, which stylishly explores chaos and alienation in modern Europe. The other films in the trilogy are Epidemic (1987), a metafictional allegory about a plague, and Europa (1991; released in the…

chemical element, any substance that cannot be decomposed into simpler substances by ordinary chemical processes. Elements are the fundamental materials of which all matter is composed. This article considers the origin of the elements and their abundances throughout the universe. The geochemical

John Brown: …celebrated exposition of his doctrine, Elementa Medicinae, which was appreciated as much for the purity of Brown’s Latin as for the practicality of its teachings. It was read with attention and was well received throughout the medical centres of Europe. In the meantime, Brown’s detractors in Edinburgh grew, his practice…

physiology: Historical background: …Elementa Physiologiae Corporis Humani (Elements of Human Physiology); all were in Latin and characterized his definition of physiology as anatomy in motion. At the end of the 18th century, Antoine Lavoisier wrote about the physiological problems of respiration and the production of heat by animals in a series of…

Alejandro Aravena: …engineer Andrés Iacobelli to establish Elemental (in 2001), a “do tank” (as opposed to a “think tank”) for architectural projects that would have a lasting social impact: civic buildings, public space, infrastructure and transportation initiatives, and some private commissions.

chemical element: Cosmic abundances of the elements: The relative numbers of atoms of the various elements are usually described as the abundances of the elements. The chief sources of data from which information is gained about present-day abundances of the elements are observations of the chemical composition of…

Pablo Neruda: Later years of Pablo Neruda: …major works, Odas elementales (Elemental Odes), was published in 1954. Its verse was written in a new poetic style—simple, direct, precise, and humorous—and it contained descriptions of everyday objects, situations, and beings (e.g., “Ode to the Onion” and “Ode to the Cat”). Many of the poems in Odas elementales…

Western architecture: Origins and development: This line of thought had been developed early in the 18th century and was popularized by a French Jesuit, Marc-Antoine Laugier, whose Essai sur l’architecture appeared in French in 1753 and in English in 1755. Advocating a return to rationalism and simplicity in building and taking…

A.S. Byatt: …The Matisse Stories (1993), and Elementals: Stories of Fire and Ice (1998); the career-spanning Medusa’s Ankles was published in 2021. She was also the author of Passions of the Mind (1991), a collection of essays, and Angels & Insects (1991; film 1995), a pair of novellas. Among her nonfiction works…

Jan Tschichold: …of modern design with “elementare typographie,” a special issue of the trade journal Typographische Mitteilungen in 1925, and with his book, Die neue Typographie (1928; The New Typography; A Handbook for Modern Designers), which expounded the principles and functional uses of Modernist typography to printers, type compositors, and designers.…

dictionary: From Classical times to 1604: …book commonly referred to as The Elementary he listed about 8,000 words, without definitions, in a section called “The General Table.” Another schoolmaster, Edmund Coote, of Bury St. Edmund’s, in 1596 brought out The English Schoolmaster, Teaching All His Scholars of What Age Soever the Most Easy Short & Perfect…

Theo van Doesburg: …named his new approach “elementarism,” and in 1926 he published a manifesto explaining it in De Stijl. Mondrian so disapproved of the concept that he rejected the De Stijl movement. In 1931 van Doesburg was involved in the formation of the Abstraction-Création association, a group of artists who advocated…

Bilingual Education Act: …was an amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.

electron charge, (symbol e), fundamental physical constant expressing the naturally occurring unit of electric charge, equal to 1.602176634 × 10−19 coulomb. In addition to the electron, all freely existing charged subatomic particles thus far discovered have an electric charge equal to this value

elementary education, the first stage traditionally found in formal education, beginning at about age 5 to 7 and ending at about age 11 to 13. In the United Kingdom and some other countries, the term primary is used instead of elementary. In the United States the term primary customarily refers to

education: Elementary Education Act: …long, acrimonious debates, passed an Elementary Education Act, the foundation upon which the English educational system has been built. Religious teaching and worship were the crucial issues in the debates, and the essentials of the settlement agreed upon were (1) a dual system of voluntary and local-authority schools and (2)…

metalogic: Ultrafilters, ultraproducts, and ultrapowers: One application of these theorems is in the introduction of nonstandard analysis, which was…

nuclear family, in sociology and anthropology, a group of people who are united by ties of partnership and parenthood and consisting of a pair of adults and their socially recognized children. Typically, but not always, the adults in a nuclear family are married. Although such couples are most

animism: Counter theories: sociologist Émile Durkheim, in his The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915), held that religion originated in totemism, conceiving that identification with a totem animal could result from an irrational projection of individuals’ expectations of security in the bosom of society. He thought such collective projections were more solidly…

formal logic: The lower predicate calculus: A predicate calculus in which the only variables that occur in quantifiers are individual variables is known as a lower (or first-order) predicate calculus. Various lower predicate calculi have been constructed. In the most straightforward of these, to which the most…

Pablo Neruda: Later years of Pablo Neruda: …major works, Odas elementales (Elemental Odes), was published in 1954. Its verse was written in a new poetic style—simple, direct, precise, and humorous—and it contained descriptions of everyday objects, situations, and beings (e.g., “Ode to the Onion” and “Ode to the Cat”). Many of the poems in Odas elementales…

subatomic particle: Elementary particles: Electrons and quarks contain no discernible structure; they cannot be reduced or separated into smaller components. It is therefore reasonable to call them “elementary” particles, a name that in the past was mistakenly given to particles such as the proton, which is in…

particle physics, Study of the fundamental subatomic particles, including both matter (and antimatter) and the carrier particles of the fundamental interactions as described by quantum field theory. Particle physics is concerned with structure and forces at this level of existence and below.

Michel Houellebecq: Writing career and books: …the United Kingdom and as The Elementary Particles in the United States. In it he presented two half brothers who were abandoned by their parents in childhood. Bruno is driven by an insatiable sexual appetite, while Michel, a scientist, avoids the issue of any attachment whatsoever by focusing his attention…

pyrometer: In an elementary radiation pyrometer, the radiation from the hot object is focused onto a thermopile, a collection of thermocouples, which generates an electrical voltage that depends on the intercepted radiation. Proper calibration permits this electrical voltage to be converted to the temperature of the hot object.

history of logic: Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF): Axiom of elementary sets. There exists a set with no members: the null, or empty, set. For any two objects a and b, there exists a set (unit set) having as its only member a, as well as a set having as its only members…

Antoine Lavoisier: The chemical revolution: …Traité élémentaire de chimie (Elementary Treatise on Chemistry) that described the precise methods chemists should employ when investigating, organizing, and explaining their subjects. It was a worthy culmination of a determined and largely successful program to reinvent chemistry as a modern science.

Arthur Cayley: …Cayley published his only book, An Elementary Treatise on Elliptic Functions, which drew out this widely studied subject from Jacobi’s point of view.

Joseph Leidy: …works, among which are the Elementary Treatise on Human Anatomy (1861), recognized as a classic American text on the subject, and “On the Extinct Mammalia of Dakota and Nebraska” (1869), described by the prominent U.S. paleontologist Henry Osborn as possibly the most important paleontological work produced in the United States.

Benjamin Peirce: …and navigation, as well as An Elementary Treatise on Sound (1836), based on the work of physicist Sir William Herschel. Peirce was instrumental in establishing the Harvard Observatory, and in 1842 he became Harvard’s Perkins Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy, a position he held until his death. In this capacity…

classical ballet: Blasis’s Traité élémentaire, théorique et pratique de l’art de la danse (1820) was the first formal codification of classical-ballet technique. As head of the ballet school at La Scala, Milan, he applied his strict methods and emphasis on form; the school became the principal source of…

psychophysics: Fechner’s classic book Elemente der Psychophysik (1860) may be looked upon as the beginning not only of psychophysics but also of experimental psychology.

Pasquale Fiore: Fiore’s Elementi di diritto internazionale privato (1901; “Elements of Private International Law”) is one of the principal statements of the doctrines of the so-called Italian, or neostatutist, school, which has exercised profound influence, especially in Latin and Latin-American countries.

Cesare Beccaria: Work in economics: …in 1804 under the title Elementi di economia pubblica (“Elements of Public Economy”). He apparently anticipated some of the ideas of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, such as the concept of division of labour and the relations between food supply and population.

Gaetano Mosca: …Parliamentary Government”) was followed by The Ruling Class (originally published in Italian, 1896). In these and other writings, but especially in The Ruling Class, he asserted—contrary to theories of majority rule—that societies are necessarily governed by minorities: by military, priestly, or hereditary oligarchies or by aristocracies of wealth or of…

José Emilio Pacheco: Los elementos de la noche (1963; “The Elements of the Night”) is a collection of his poems and essays published in periodicals from 1958 to 1962. The poems of El reposo del fuego (1966; “The Sleep of the Fire”) contemplate a world in disintegration, and…

Elements, treatise on geometry and mathematics written by the Greek mathematician Euclid (flourished 300 bce). The Elements is one of the most influential books ever written. It set a standard for deductive reasoning and geometric instruction that persisted, practically unchanged, for more than

Hippocrates of Chios: Hippocrates’ Elements is known only through references made in the works of later commentators, especially the Greek philosophers Proclus (c. ad 410–485) and Simplicius of Cilicia (fl. c. ad 530). In his attempts to square the circle, Hippocrates was able to find the areas of certain…

Léon Walras: …Éléments d’économie politique pure (1874–77; Elements of Pure Economics) was one of the first comprehensive mathematical analyses of general economic equilibrium. Because Walras wrote in French, his work did not get much attention in Britain, the hotbed of 19th-century economics; however, today he, Karl Marx, and David Ricardo are the…

Antoine-Louis-Claude, Comte Destutt de Tracy: …presented his basic ideas in Éléments d’idéologie, 4 vol. (1801–15). Like the sensationalism of Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–80), Idéologie stressed the importance of human sensations in the formation of knowledge. Destutt de Tracy, however, further refined Condillac’s views to emphasize the physiological nature of sensation. Human thought, he asserted,…

mathematics: Foundations of geometry: was Adrien-Marie Legendre’s textbook Éléments de géométrie (Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry), the first edition of which appeared in 1794. Legendre presented an elegant demonstration that purported to show that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. He believed that he had…

Voltaire: Life with Mme du Châtelet: …Mandeville, Voltaire popularized, in his Éléments de la philosophie de Newton (1738), those discoveries of English science that were familiar only to a few advanced minds in France, such as the astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis. At the same time, he continued to pursue his historical studies. He began…

algebra: Bourbaki: …collection of extremely influential textbooks, Eléments de mathématique, that covered several central mathematical disciplines, particularly from a structural perspective. Yet, to the extent that Bourbaki’s mathematics was structural, it was so in a general, informal way. As van der Waerden extended to all of algebra the structural approach that Steinitz…

Western philosophy: Professionalization of philosophy: In his Éléments de philosophie (1759; “Elements of Philosophy”), d’Alembert wrote:

Denis Diderot: The Encyclopédie: …1830; “D’Alembert’s Dream”), and the Eléments de physiologie (1774–80). In these works Diderot developed his materialist philosophy and arrived at startling intuitive insights into biology and chemistry; in speculating on the origins of life without divine intervention, for instance, he foreshadowed the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and put forth…

Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet: …la pluralité des voix (Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions), a remarkable work that has a distinguished place in the history of the doctrine of probability. A second edition, greatly enlarged and completely recast, appeared in 1805 under the title of Éléments du…

Jean-Nicolas Billaud-Varenne: Billaud-Varenne’s Éléments du républicanisme (1793; “Elements of Republicanism”) set forth Hébertist demands such as the redistribution of wealth and guaranteed employment for all workers.

Sir Humphry Davy: Early life: This led to his Elements of Agricultural Chemistry (1813), the only systematic work available for many years. For his researches on voltaic cells, tanning, and mineral analysis, he received the Copley Medal in 1805. He was elected secretary of the Royal Society in 1807.

Augustus De Morgan: One of his earliest works, Elements of Arithmetic (1830), was distinguished by a simple yet thorough philosophical treatment of the ideas of number and magnitude. In 1838 he introduced and defined the term mathematical induction to describe the process that until then had been used with little clarity in mathematical…

Ada Lovelace: …de Charles Babbage” (1842; “Elements of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Machine”). Her detailed and elaborate annotations (especially her description of how the proposed Analytical Engine could be programmed to compute Bernoulli numbers) were excellent; “the Analytical Engine,” she said, “weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”

Karl Gegenbaur: …Grundzüge der vergleichenden Anatomie (1859; Elements of Comparative Anatomy) became the standard textbook of evolutionary morphology, emphasizing that structural similarities in different animals constitute clues to their evolutionary history. In this work Gegenbaur stated that “the most important part of the business of comparative anatomy is to find indications of…

Henry Home, Lord Kames: …is best known for his Elements of Criticism, 3 vol. (1762), a work remarkable in the history of aesthetics for its attempt to equate beauty with what is pleasant to the natural senses of sight and hearing.

Charles Lyell: Scientific eminence of Charles Lyell: In 1838 Lyell’s Elements of Geology was published; it described European rocks and fossils from the most recent, Lyell’s specialty, to the oldest then known. Like the Principles of Geology, this well-illustrated work was periodically enlarged and updated.

mathematics: Foundations of geometry: was Adrien-Marie Legendre’s textbook Éléments de géométrie (Elements of Geometry and Trigonometry), the first edition of which appeared in 1794. Legendre presented an elegant demonstration that purported to show that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles. He believed that he had…

physiology: Historical background: …Elementa Physiologiae Corporis Humani (Elements of Human Physiology); all were in Latin and characterized his definition of physiology as anatomy in motion. At the end of the 18th century, Antoine Lavoisier wrote about the physiological problems of respiration and the production of heat by animals in a series of…

Henry Wheaton: Wheaton’s Elements of International Law (1836) was translated into many languages and became a standard work. Histoire du progrès du droit des gens en Europe (1841) was expanded and translated into English as History of the Law of Nations in Europe and America (1845). His History…

Sir Erskine Holland: …international law whose outstanding work, Elements of Jurisprudence, underwent 13 editions from 1880 to 1924.

Thomas Hobbes: Intellectual development of Thomas Hobbes: The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic (written in 1640, published in a misedited unauthorized version in 1650) was Hobbes’s first work of political philosophy, though he did not intend it for publication as a book.