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  • Unnamable, The (work by Beckett)
    ...between 1946 and 1949, Beckett produced a number of stories, the major prose narratives Molloy (1951), Malone meurt (1951; Malone Dies), and L’Innommable (1953; The Unnamable), and two plays, the unpublished three-act Eleutheria and Waiting for Godot....
  • Unnatural Mothers, The (painting by Segantini)
    ...to that of the Pointillists. Possibly inspired by literary sources, he also evolved a Symbolist subject matter seen in such paintings as “The Punishment of Luxury” (1891), “The Unnatural Mothers” (1894), and “Love at the Fountain of Life” (1896). A pantheist by nature, he felt himself in mystic communion with his mountain environment. He usually used an...
  • Ünnepi nyitány (orchestral work by Erkel)
    ...hősök (1880; “Anonymous Heroes”) was based on Hungarian folk music. Erkel composed one of his last significant works, the Ünnepi nyitány (1887; “Festival Overture”), for the 50th anniversary of the opening of the National Theatre in Budapest....
  • Unnerstad, Edith (Swedish author)
    ...Kullman and Martha Sandwall-Bergström are among the few Swedish writers who have used working class industrial backgrounds successfully. Kullman is also a historical novelist. The prolific Edith Unnerstad has written charming family stories, with a touch of fantasy, as has Karin Anckarsvärd, whose Doktorns pojk’ (1963; Eng. trans., Doctor’s Boy, 1965) i...
  • Unnewehr, Margaret (American businesswoman)
    American sports executive (b. Aug. 18, 1928, Cincinnati, Ohio—d. March 2, 2004, Cincinnati), became notorious for making outrageous and offensive public statements about blacks, homosexuals, and Asians, among others, while serving (1984–99) as the owner of the Cincinnati Reds major league baseball team. Schott, a wealthy widow, purchased a limited partnership in the team in 1981, bou...
  • Unni (archbishop of Hamburg)
    ...in 830. He was allowed to preach and set up a church in Birka, but the Swedes showed little interest. A second Frankish missionary was forced to flee. In the 930s another archbishop of Hamburg, Unni, undertook a new mission, with as little success as his predecessors. In Västergötland to the southwest, Christianity, introduced mainly by English missionaries, was more generally......
  • unnilennium (chemical element)
    an artificially produced element belonging to the transuranium group, atomic number 109. It is predicted to have chemical properties resembling those of iridium....
  • unnilhexium (chemical element)
    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 106. In September of the same year, a group of American researchers headed by ...
  • unniloctium (chemical element)
    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 position in the periodic table of the elements, it is expected to have chemical properties simil...
  • unnilpentium (chemical element)
    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 synthesized a few atoms of element 105 in 1967 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dub...
  • unnilquadium (chemical element)
    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 kurchatovium, symbol Ku (for Igor Kurchatov, a Soviet nuclear physicist). In 1969, a group of ...
  • unnilseptium (chemical element)
    a synthetic element in Group VIIb of the periodic table. It is thought to be chemically similar to the rare metal rhenium....
  • UNO (Nicaraguan political organization)
    ...election that was widely criticized for its lack of safeguards for opposition parties. In 1990, however, the Nicaraguan populace, weary of war and economic depression, voted for the 14 parties of the National Opposition Union, which formed a government while the Sandinistas relinquished power....
  • Uno (chemical element)
    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 position in the periodic table of the elements, it is expected to have chemical properties simil...
  • Uno Chiyo (Japanese writer)
    Japanese short-story writer and novelist who became better known for a personal life perceived as scandalous than for the break she made with the Japanese literary scene of the 1920s and ’30s....
  • “Uno, nessuno e centomila” (work by Pirandello)
    Meanwhile, he had been writing other novels, notably I vecchi e i giovani (1913; The Old and The Young) and Uno, nessuno e centomila (1925–26; One, None, and a Hundred Thousand). Both are more typical than Il fu Mattia Pascal. The first, a historical novel reflecting the Sicily of the end of the 19th century and the general bitterness at the loss of the......
  • Uno Sōsuke (prime minister of Japan)
    politician who served as prime minister of Japan for 68 days (June 2–Aug. 9, 1989)....
  • Uno y el universo (work by Sabato)
    Uno y el universo (1945; “One and the Universe”), a series of aphorisms, statements, and personal observations by Sábato on diverse philosophical, social, and political matters, was his first literary success. The novel El túnel (1948; “The Tunnel”; Eng. trans. The Outsider) won Sábato national and....
  • UNO-City (buildings, Vienna, Austria)
    ...world organizations. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) moved its headquarters to Vienna in 1965. On the outskirts of Vienna, across the Danube, the modern buildings of the Vienna International Centre, or UNO-City, include the offices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and other UN agencies....
  • Unocal Corporation (American company)
    American petrochemical corporation founded in 1890 with the union of three “wildcatter” companies—the Hardison & Stewart Oil Company, the Sespe Oil Company, and the Torrey Canyon Oil Company. Originally centred in Santa Paula, Calif., it became headquartered in Los Angeles in 1900. Its present name was adopted in 1983, when the company was reorganized. Its founders wer...
  • Unofficial Committee (Russian history)
    ...in war. The early years of his reign saw two short periods of attempted reform. During the first, from 1801 to 1803, the tsar took counsel with four intimate friends, who formed his so-called Unofficial Committee, with the intention of drafting ambitious reforms. In the period from 1807 to 1812, he had as his chief adviser the liberal Mikhail Speransky. Both periods produced some valuable......
  • Unonopsis veneficiorum (plant)
    In the upper Amazon region, Indian tribes use an extract from the tree Unonopsis veneficiorum to tip their poison blowgun darts and arrows; this substance has a similar paralyzing effect on humans and other animals to that caused by curare, which is obtained from the genus Strychnos of the family Loganiaceae....
  • unordered pair, axiom of the (set theory)
    ...quality, further means of constructing sets from existing sets must be introduced if some of the desirable features of Cantorian set theory are to be established. Three axioms in the table—axiom of pairing, axiom of union, and axiom of power set—are of this sort....
  • unordered partition (mathematics)
    ...are called the parts of the partition. The ... for this is the number of ways of putting k - 1 separating marks in the n - 1 spaces between n dots in a row. The theory of unordered partitions is much more difficult and has many interesting features. An unordered partition can be standardized by listing the parts in a decreasing order. Thus n =......
  • Unp (chemical element)
    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 synthesized a few atoms of element 105 in 1967 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dub...
  • UNP (political party, Sri Lanka)
    Among the political parties in Sri Lanka, the conservative United National Party and the more liberal Sri Lanka Freedom Party have dominated the political arena since independence. Successive governments have been led by one or the other of these two parties, which, at times, formed coalitions with the smaller parties....
  • unpredictable drought (meteorology)
    3. Unpredictable drought involves an abnormal rainfall failure; it may occur almost anywhere but is most characteristic of humid and subhumid climates. Usually brief and irregular, it often affects only a relatively small area....
  • Unq (chemical element)
    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 kurchatovium, symbol Ku (for Igor Kurchatov, a Soviet nuclear physicist). In 1969, a group of ...
  • Unquiet Spirit, The (work by Bernard)
    ...before World War I. Unconscious jealousy is the theme of Le Feu qui reprend mal (1921; The Sulky Fire) and Le Printemps des autres (1924; The Springtime of Others). In L’Âme en peine (1926; The Unquiet Spirit), two characters who never meet feel an inexplicable disquiet whenever they are near one another. Included among Bernard’s la...
  • UNR (political party, France)
    ...to power as the only figure capable of resolving the national crisis over Algeria; his victory did not result from party politicking. His supporters coalesced into three main groups, of which the Union for the New Republic (Union pour la Nouvelle République; UNR) emerged as the most important and electorally successful, gaining 26 percent of the vote in the 1958 election....
  • Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency (work by E. and S. Glueck)
    Subsequent books by the Gluecks included Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency (1950), in which they published their controversial Social Prediction Tables by which they claimed potential delinquents could be identified by the age of six, Delinquents in the Making (1952), Physique and Delinquency (1956), Predicting Delinquency and Crime (1959), Family Environment and......
  • Unreason, Abbot of (Scottish official)
    Scotland had an official similar to the Lord of Misrule, known as the Abbot of Unreason (suppressed in 1555), and both are thought by scholars to be descended from the “king” or “bishop” who presided over the earlier Feast of Fools. Another related functionary was the Boy Bishop, the leader of children’s Christmas festivities in the choir schools....
  • unrestricted stopping power (physics)
    ...power, is numerically equal to the linear energy transfer and changes smoothly to a constant value, called the Fermi plateau, as the ratio β approaches unity. The other half, called the unrestricted stopping power, increases without limit, but its effect at extreme relativistic velocities (those very near the speed of light) becomes small compared with energy loss by nuclear......
  • unrestricted submarine warfare
    ...the German assaults on neutrals’ rights at sea, and the cumulative effect of Allied propaganda and German provocations conjoined to end U.S. neutrality by 1917. On Feb. 4, 1915, Germany declared the waters around the British Isles a war zone in which Allied ships would be sunk, without warning if necessary. While this procedure dispensed with traditional civilities like boarding, search ...
  • UNRISD (international organization)
    autonomous United Nations body established in 1964 to conduct research into the problems and policies of social and economic development. UNRISD is dependent on voluntary contributions from governments, from other UN organizations, and from various national and international agencies because it does not receive monies from the regular UN budget; it has been supported by 15, primarily European, gov...
  • unrounded vowel (phonetics)
    Unrounding is the opposite of rounding; in unrounded vowels the lips are slack or may be drawn back, as in pronouncing the ee in “meet.” Generally speaking, front vowels tend to be unrounded and back vowels rounded, and this tendency is recognized in the classification of vowels (see vowel). However, the French u of tu, “you,” in contrast wit...
  • UNRRA (international organization)
    administrative body (1943–47) for an extensive social-welfare program that assisted nations ravaged by World War II. Created on Nov. 9, 1943, by a 44-nation agreement, its operations concentrated on distributing relief supplies, such as food, clothing, fuel, shelter, and medicines; providing relief services, with trained personnel; and aiding agricultural and economic rehabilitation. In add...
  • Unruh, Fritz von (German author)
    dramatist, poet, and novelist, one of the most poetically gifted of the younger German Expressionist writers....
  • Unruh, Walther (German stage engineer)
    ...more than 100 of them had been restored to their former state or else had been redesigned and rebuilt along contemporary lines. The chief innovator in stage design and mechanization was Walther Unruh, whose work is exemplified by the Deutsche Oper in West Berlin. There, the stage is cruciform in plan, employing lifts under the main stage, a sliding revolving stage with trapdoors......
  • UNRWA (international organization)
    subsidiary agency created by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in 1949 to provide relief, health, and education services for Palestinians who lost both their homes and means of livelihood during the Arab-Israeli wars following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Beginning operations in 1950, UNRWA was originally headquar...
  • Uns (chemical element)
    a synthetic element in Group VIIb of the periodic table. It is thought to be chemically similar to the rare metal rhenium....
  • Unsafe at Any Speed (work by Nader)
    ...interested in unsafe vehicle designs that led to high rates of automobile accidents and fatalities. He became a consultant to the U.S. Department of Labor in 1964, and in 1965 he published Unsafe at Any Speed, which criticized the American auto industry in general for its unsafe products and attacked General Motors’ (GM’s) Corvair automobile in particular. The book be...
  • unsalted butter
    ...16–17 percent water, and 1–2 percent milk solids other than fat (sometimes referred to as curd). It may contain salt, added directly to the butter in concentrations of 1 to 2 percent. Unsalted butter is often referred to as “sweet” butter. This should not be confused with “sweet cream” butter, which may or may not be salted. Reduced-fat, or......
  • unsaturated acid (chemical compound)
    ...important to distinguish between the saturated acids (acids containing only single bonds between carbon atoms, such as palmitic or stearic), with relatively high melting temperatures, and the unsaturated acids (acids with one or more pairs of carbon atoms joined by double bonds, such as oleic or linoleic), which are low melting and chemically much more reactive....
  • unsaturated compound (chemical compound)
    Two other chemical families that are important in petroleum refining are composed of unsaturated molecules. In unsaturated molecules, not all the valence electrons on a carbon atom are bonded to separate carbon or hydrogen atoms; instead, two or three electrons may be taken up by one neighbouring carbon atom, thus forming a “double” or “triple” carbon-carbon bond. Like....
  • unsaturated hydrocarbon (chemical compound)
    Two other chemical families that are important in petroleum refining are composed of unsaturated molecules. In unsaturated molecules, not all the valence electrons on a carbon atom are bonded to separate carbon or hydrogen atoms; instead, two or three electrons may be taken up by one neighbouring carbon atom, thus forming a “double” or “triple” carbon-carbon bond. Like....
  • unsaturated polymer (chemistry)
    Unsaturated polyesters are linear copolymers containing carbon-carbon double bonds that are capable of undergoing further polymerization in the presence of free-radical initiators. The copolyesters are prepared from a dicarboxylic acid or its anhydride (usually phthalic anhydride) and an unsaturated dicarboxylic acid or anhydride, along with one or more dialcohols. Most commonly, maleic......
  • unsaturation (chemistry)
    ...aromatic azo and nitro compounds often are highly coloured and that the colours are diminished or destroyed when the compounds are hydrogenated. The ability of a compound to take up hydrogen, called unsaturation, is caused by the presence of electrons that are not strongly fixed in covalent bonds between particular pairs of atoms but occupy larger regions of space (molecular orbitals) that may....
  • UNSCOM (UN)
    The Security Council established a UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) to inspect and verify that Iraq was complying with the ban on WMD. By mid-1991, however, it was becoming clear that the embargo would very likely last longer than had been originally expected and that, in the meantime, the people of Iraq needed humanitarian aid. Thus, the Security Council passed a pair of......
  • UNSCOP (international committee)
    ...stationed there during the war, more than 80,000 still remained), referred the Palestine question to the United Nations (UN). On August 31 a majority report of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended that the region be partitioned into an Arab and a Jewish state, which, however, should retain an economic union (see map). Jerusalem and its environs were to be internatio...
  • Unseld, Siegfried (German publisher)
    German publisher (b. Sept. 28, 1924, Ulm, Ger.—d. Oct. 26, 2002, Frankfurt, Ger.), headed the literary giant Suhrkamp Verlag. Unseld was a Nazi Youth leader and served in the navy during World War II. After the war he discovered the writings of Hermann Hesse and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Tübingen on Hesse, who personally recommended him to Suhrkamp in 1952. Un...
  • Unser, Al (American race–car driver)
    American automobile-racing driver from a prestigious family of drivers, who won the Indianapolis 500 four times (1970–71, 1978, 1987)....
  • Unser, Alfred (American race–car driver)
    American automobile-racing driver from a prestigious family of drivers, who won the Indianapolis 500 four times (1970–71, 1978, 1987)....
  • Unser, Bobby (American race–car driver)
    American automobile-racing driver from a family of drivers, who won the Indianapolis 500 three times (1968, 1975, 1981)....
  • Unser, Robert William (American race–car driver)
    American automobile-racing driver from a family of drivers, who won the Indianapolis 500 three times (1968, 1975, 1981)....
  • Unser Schweizer Standpunkt (work by Spitteler)
    ...and biographical works of charm, including Meine frühesten Erlebnisse (1914; “My Earliest Experiences”). In 1914 he published a politically influential tract, “Unser Schweizer Standpunkt,” directed against a one-sided pro-German view of World War I. An English translation of his Selected Poems appeared in 1928....
  • Unsinkable Molly Brown, The (film by Walters)
    ...bears little resemblance to the legendary Molly Brown, who was created in the 1930s and achieved prominence in the 1960 musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown and the 1964 film adaptation starring Debbie Reynolds....
  • Unsinkable Molly Brown, The (musical by Willson)
    ...Brown, never known in life by the nickname Molly, bears little resemblance to the legendary Molly Brown, who was created in the 1930s and achieved prominence in the 1960 musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown and the 1964 film adaptation starring Debbie Reynolds....
  • Unsoeld, William F. (American explorer and mountaineer)
    ...Ridge route. On May 1 James W. Whittaker and the Sherpa Nawang Gombu, nephew of Tenzing Norgay, reached the summit despite high winds. On May 22 four other Americans reached the top. Two of them, William F. Unsoeld and Thomas F. Hornbein, made mountaineering history by ascending the West Ridge, which until then had been considered unclimbable. They descended the traditional way, along the......
  • unsolvability (logic and mathematics)
    ...propositions. If, in this sense of comparison, the functional response of the automaton is identical to the functional value of the logical statement (polynomial), the automaton is then said to compute the statement (polynomial) or the statement is said to be computable. A wider class of computable statements is introduced with the general automaton, yet to be defined, as with the more......
  • unsought good (economics)
    Finally, an unsought good is one that a consumer does not know about—or knows about but does not normally think of buying. New products, such as new frozen-food concepts or new communications equipment, are unsought until consumers learn about them through word-of-mouth influence or advertising. In addition, the need for unsought goods may not seem urgent to the consumer, and purchase is......
  • Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (work by Barthelme)
    ...Dead Father (1975). Barthelme was most successful in his short stories and parodies that solemnly caricatured contemporary styles, especially the richly suggestive pieces collected in Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts (1968), City Life (1970), and Guilty Pleasures (1974)....
  • unstructured data (computing)
    ...of digital information storage, it is useful to distinguish between “structured” data, such as inventories of objects that can be represented by short symbol strings and numbers, and “unstructured” data, such as the natural-language text of documents or pictorial images. The principal objective of all storage structures is to facilitate the processing of data element...
  • ʿUnṣurī (Persian poet)
    ...Maḥmūd (reigned 998–1030), who assembled a circle of scholars, philosophers, and poets around his throne in support of his claim to royal status in Iran. The leading poet was ʿUnṣurī, whom the sultan appointed as his “lord of the poets” with the authority to test the talents of any poet seeking to be admitted to the sultan’s court.....
  • Unsworth, Barry (British author)
    ...urge to look back—at starting points, previous eras, fictional prototypes—was widely evident. The historical novel enjoyed an exceptional heyday. One of its outstanding practitioners was Barry Unsworth, the settings of whose works range from the Ottoman Empire (Pascali’s Island [1980], The Rage of the Vulture [1982]) to Veni...
  • Unsworth, Geoffrey (British cinematographer)
    Original Screenplay: Jeremy Larner for The CandidateAdapted Screenplay: Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola for The GodfatherCinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth for CabaretArt Direction: Jurgen Kiebach and Rolf Zehetbauer for CabaretOriginal Dramatic Score: Charles Chaplin, Raymond Rasch, Larry Russell for......
  • UNTAC (United Nations interim government)
    ...Council, with the backing of the factions, endorsed this treaty and agreed to establish in the country a peacekeeping operation consisting of both soldiers and civil servants under the control of a United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia which would monitor progress toward conducting elections, temporarily run several government ministries, and safeguard human rights....
  • UNTAG (United Nations organization)
    The United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) opened operations in April 1989. After a disastrous start—in which South African forces massacred PLAN forces seeking to report to UNTAG to be confined to designated areas—UNTAG slowly gained control over the registration and electoral process in most areas....
  • Untash-Gal (king of Elam)
    ...1266 bc), the fourth king of this line, proceeded apace, and his successes were commemorated by his assumption of the title “Expander of the Empire.” He was succeeded by his son, Untash-Gal (Untash [d] Gal, or Untash-Huban), a contemporary of Shalmaneser I of Assyria (c. 1274–c. 1245 bc) and the founder of the city of Dūr Unt...
  • Untash-Huban (king of Elam)
    ...1266 bc), the fourth king of this line, proceeded apace, and his successes were commemorated by his assumption of the title “Expander of the Empire.” He was succeeded by his son, Untash-Gal (Untash [d] Gal, or Untash-Huban), a contemporary of Shalmaneser I of Assyria (c. 1274–c. 1245 bc) and the founder of the city of Dūr Unt...
  • “Unter den Brücken” (film by Käutner)
    ...for its compositional perfection and technical virtuosity. Käutner’s last film of this period was the well-regarded Unter den Brücken (1945; Under the Bridges)—a movie made under the arduous conditions of the final days of the war, when filming was frequently interrupted by the noise of Allied bombers en route to Berl...
  • Unter den Linden (poem by Walther)
    ...that were not especially prominent in his own life. As a love poet he developed a fresh and original treatment of the situations of courtly love and, ultimately, in such poems as the popular “Unter der Linden,” achieved a free, uninhibited style in which the poses of court society gave way before the natural affections of village folk....
  • Unter den Linden (avenue, Berlin, Germany)
    avenue in Berlin, Germany, running eastward from the Brandenburg Gate for nearly a mile. The street is named for the linden (lime) trees that formerly grew along the central promenade and now line the sidewalks....
  • Unterelbe River (river, Europe)
    ...the southeast of the old city, the Elbe divides itself into two branches, the Norderelbe and the Süderelbe; but these branches meet again opposite Altona, just west of the old city, to form the Unterelbe, which flows into the North Sea some 65 miles downstream from Hamburg. Two other rivers flow into the Elbe at Hamburg—the Alster from the north and the Bille from the east....
  • “Untergang des Abendlandes, Der” (work by Spengler)
    Oswald Spengler’s 1918–22 best-seller The Decline of the West mourned the engulfing of Kultur by the cosmopolitan anthill of Zivilisation and argued that only a dictatorship could arrest the decline. Sociologist Max Weber hoped for charismatic leadership to overcome bureaucracy. Much painting, music, and film of the 1920s illustrated the theme of decline: Paul Kl...
  • Untergrundbahn (railway, Berlin, Germany)
    ...since the 19th century. Construction of the Stadt- or Schnellbahn (S-Bahn), a largely elevated and partly underground railway system, began in 1871, and building of the subway, or Untergrundbahn (U-Bahn), was initiated in 1897. By World War II the city had one of the finest rapid transit systems in Europe. After the erection of the wall, the bus became the mainstay of transportation, although.....
  • Unterharz (region, Germany)
    The Unterharz has a milder climate, which supports grain agriculture and cattle herding; its forests are made up predominantly of beech, oak, and walnut. Among the wild-game animals, bear, lynx, and wolf have been hunted to extinction; deer, fox, wildcat, and badger remain, however. The Harz has long been renowned for animal breeding, especially for deer and canaries....
  • Unterland (historical principality, Germany)
    ...chief towns, was bounded east by the kingdom of Saxony, south by Bavaria, west by Saxe-Meiningen and part of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, and northwest by an exclave of Prussian Saxony. The other block, Unterland, around Gera, was bounded east and west by Saxe-Altenburg and north by Prussian Saxony....
  • Unterlinden, Musée d’ (museum, Colmar, France)
    Colmar’s many fountains, ancient churches, and Alsatian Renaissance houses have made Colmar a centre of tourism. The Musée d’Unterlinden, formerly a convent, houses the 16th-century Isenheim Altarpiece, the master work of the German religious painter Matthias Grünewald. The home of the sculptor of New York City’s Statue of Liberty, Frédéric-Auguste ...
  • “Unterm Rad” (work by Hesse)
    ...student, he was unable to adapt, so he was apprenticed in a Calw tower-clock factory and later in a Tübingen bookstore. His disgust with conventional schooling was expressed in the novel Unterm Rad (1906; Beneath the Wheel), in which an overly diligent student is driven to self-destruction....
  • Untermarkt (district, Freiberg, Germany)
    The Altstadt (Old City) has three separate parts: the oldest, the Civitas Saxonum, a maze of alleys around the Nikolai (St. Nicholas) church; the Untermarkt (Lower Market), a merchant district with the modern cathedral at its centre; and the Oberstadt (Upper City), with the town hall and St. Peter’s Church as its notable landmarks. Medieval buildings include the town hall (1410–16),....
  • Untermeyer, Louis (American author and editor)
    American poet, essayist, and editor who is best known for his numerous poetry anthologies....
  • Unterricht der Visitatoren (work by Melanchthon)
    ...Reform movement, Melanchthon was chosen as one of the 28 commissioners to visit Saxony and regulate the constitution of the churches. In 1528 this resulted in the publication of Unterricht der Visitatoren (“Instructions for Visitors”), a set of instructions for the commissioners. In addition to a statement of Evangelical doctrine, it contained an outline.....
  • Unterseeboot (German submarine)
    (“undersea boat”), a German submarine. The destruction of enemy shipping by German U-boats was a spectacular feature of both World Wars I and II. ...
  • Unterseeboot 1 (German submarine)
    ...of the century, only Britain remained indifferent toward submarines. Finally, in 1901, the Royal Navy ordered five of the Holland-design undersea craft. Germany completed its first submarine, the U-1 (for Unterseeboot 1), in 1905. This craft was 139 feet long, powered on the surface by a heavy oil engine and by an electric motor when submerged, and was armed with one torpedo tube....
  • “Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral” (work by Kant)
    His principal work of this period was Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral (1764; “An Inquiry into the Distinctness of the Fundamental Principles of Natural Theology and Morals”). In this work he attacked the claim of Leibnizian philosophy that philosophy should model itself on mathematics and aim at......
  • Untersuchungen über die Brandpilze (work by Bary)
    In his book Untersuchungen über die Brandpilze (1853; “Researches Concerning Fungal Blights”), he correctly asserted that fungi associated with rust and smut diseases of plants are the cause, rather than the effect, of these diseases. In 1865 he proved that the life cycle of wheat rust involves two hosts, wheat and barberry. He was the first to show (1866) that lichens....
  • Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität (work by Du Bois-Reymond)
    ...cause of muscular contraction. Although later research showed the process of nerve and muscle stimulation to be much more complex than Du Bois-Reymond’s model, the summation of his studies in Untersuchungen über thierische Elektricität, 2 vol. (1848–1884; “Researches on Animal Electricity”), created the field of scientific electrophysiology....
  • “Untertan, Der” (work by Mann)
    ...its film version Der blaue Engel (1928; The Blue Angel). His Kaiserreich trilogy—consisting of Die Armen (1917; The Poor); Der Untertan (1918; The Patrioteer); and Der Kopf (1925; The Chief)—carries even further his indictment of the social types produced by the authoritarian state. These novels were accompanied by......
  • Unterwalden (former canton, Switzerland)
    former canton, central Switzerland; it occupied the basins of the Sarner Aa (river) and the Engelberger Aa. The former canton is divided (east and west) into two sovereign half cantons—Nidwalden and Obwalden—based on the medieval distinction between the upper and lower river valleys. Unterwalden was included in the Zürichgau (district) and was ruled after 1...
  • Untimely Meditations (work by Nietzsche)
    Nietzsche’s writings fall into three well-defined periods. The early works, The Birth of Tragedy and the four Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen (1873; Untimely Meditations), are dominated by a Romantic perspective influenced by Schopenhauer and Wagner. The middle period, from Human, All-Too-Human up to The Gay Science, reflects the tradition of French......
  • Untitled (work by Gober [1990])
    Gober carried these ideas further in sculptures and installations that commingled the familiar with the strange. Untitled (1990), in the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, is a realistic sculpture of the lower part of a man’s leg, isolated as if it were emerging from or disappearing into a wall. Replete with shoe, sock, a bit of pants leg, and an area of h...
  • Untitled (work by Gober [1997])
    ...with shoe, sock, a bit of pants leg, and an area of hairy skin exposed, the sculpture suggests at once both masculine presence and its disempowerment. At first glance, Gober’s Untitled (1997), in the Milwaukee Art Museum, seems to be simply an open suitcase on the floor. Upon further examination, however, the bottom of the suitcase opens to a small installat...
  • Untitled Film Stills (work by Sherman)
    ...at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and majored in painting, later switching her major to photography. She graduated from SUNY in 1976 and in 1977 began work on Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), one of her best-known series. The series of 8 × 10-inch black-and-white photographs featuring Sherman in a variety of roles is reminiscent of film...
  • Untitled (Perfect Lovers) (work by Gonzalez-Torres)
    ...death of his HIV-positive partner. However commonplace the objects with which Gonzalez-Torres worked, his art seemed suffused with a buoyant spirit and a poignant poetry. For Untitled (Perfect Lovers) (1991), he synchronized two industrial clocks placed side by side. Inevitably, because batteries fail and things tend toward entropy, the clocks would slowly begin to...
  • Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground) (work by Kruger)
    ...had developed her trademark style: large-scale photographic works that appropriate anonymous cultural images and text and juxtapose them in unexpected ways. In her 1989 work Untitled (Your Body Is a Battleground), for example, she employed an oversized image of a model’s face and divided it into sections. Placed across the image is the phrase “Your body i...
  • Unto This Last (essay by Ruskin)
    These values are persistently restated in Ruskin’s writings of the 1860s, sometimes in surprising ways. Unto This Last and Munera Pulveris (1862 and 1872 as books, though published in magazines in 1860 and 1862–63) are attacks on the classical economics of Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Neither book makes any significant technical contribution to the study...
  • Untouchability Offenses Act (1955, India)
    ...the constitution provides these groups with specific educational and vocational privileges and grants them special representation in the Indian parliament. In support of these efforts, the Untouchability (Offenses) Act (1955) provides penalties for preventing anyone from enjoying a wide variety of religious, occupational, and social rights on the grounds that he is a Harijan, the name......
  • untouchable (Hindu social class)
    in traditional Indian society, any member of a wide range of low-caste Hindu groups and any person outside the caste system. The use of the term and the social disabilities associated with it were declared illegal in the constitutions adopted by the Constituent Assembly of India in 1949 and of Pakistan in 1953. Mahatma Gandhi called untouchables Harijans (...
  • Untouchable (work by Anand)
    A prolific writer, Anand first gained wide recognition for his novels Untouchable (1935) and Coolie (1936), both of which examined the problems of poverty in Indian society. In 1945 he returned to Bombay (now Mumbai) to campaign for national reforms. Among his other major works are The Village (1939), ......
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