Zabdiel Boylston (1679-1766) was the first American physician to use inoculation against smallpox in 1721 during a Boston epidemic. Zabdiel Boylston was born March 9, 1679, near the present city of Brookline, Mass., and studied medicine wi...

The integration of Koreans into Japanese society has always been a major social, economic, and political issue. The following description of Korean housing in Japan in the late nineteenth century indicates that house style was one cultural...

ZALMOXIS was the founder, possibly legendary, of a priestly line of succession closely linked with kingship of the Getae and the Dacians, the northernmost Thracian peoples of the ancient world. Whether he is a figure of legend or of histor...

The Zambales Mountains in the Philippines stretch from the northern part of Zambales Province to the northern edge of Bataan Province. This range comprises nearly the whole province of Zambales. There are eight named mountains in the range...

(2000 pop. 603,000). Located at the tip of the Zamboanga Peninsula in the Mindanao Island group in the Philippines, the City of Zamboanga is a chartered city independent of the province of Zamboanga del Sur in terms of funding, administrat...

Considered by pop-culture critics to be the quintessential underground comic book of the 1960s, Zap Comix can trace its genealogy to the publication of Jack Jaxon's God Nose in 1963. By 1999, there were estimated to be more than two...

Shaykh Zayid bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (born 1923) served for 18 years as the governor of the Buraimi Oasis and for five years as the ruler of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, one of the Trucial States, before becoming president of the United Arab Emi...

ZEALOTS. The Zealots were Jewish revolutionaries in first-century Israel whose religious zeal led them to fight to the death against Roman domination and to attack or kill other Jews who collaborated with the Romans. Scholars disagree as t...

The zebrafish (Brachydanio rerio) is a small tropical freshwater fish that began to be used as a genetic model system in the early 1980s. The zebrafish shares numerous anatomical and genetic similarities with higher vertebrates, including ...

Zebu, or brahminy cattle (Bos indicus; sometimes called humped oxen or Brahman), are a species of domesticated livestock native to India. According to some, they are the same species as common cattle (Bos taurus), but others think that the...

The career of Zebulon Pike (1779-1813), American soldier and explorer, was dominated by ambiguously motivated explorations of the American West. During one of these he unsuccessfully tried to climb the Colorado mountain named for him, Pike...

According to classical electromagnetic theory, a charge rotating with a simple harmonic frequency should emit electromagnetic radiation of the same frequency. And when an external magnetic field is applied to this system, the frequency of ...

Zen and the Beat Way by Alan Watts Is set in the late fifties and sixties. Its author reminds me of a pre- hippie. He was a former Episcopal priest who left his home in England and his religion for California and Zen Buddhism. He was again...

The Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium (335-263 BC) was the founder of Stoicism. His teachings had a profound influence throughout the ancient world and in important respects helped pave the way for Christianity. Zeno the son of Mnaseas, was...

c. 150-c. 70 B.C. Greek Near Eastern philosopher noted for his penetrating critique of Euclid (c. 325-c. 250 B.C.). A thinker of the Epicurean school, Zeno was predisposed against mathematics and the sciences, but unlike Epicurus (341-270 ...

200?-140? B.C. Greek mathematician who wrote about plane and solid figures of equal perimeter or surface, but with different areas and volumes (isometric figures). While his texts are lost, it is known from other writers that he proved the...

The zeolites are a group of more than 35 soft, white minerals comprised mostly of aluminum, silicon, and oxygen and having a crystal structure featuring spacious pores or rings. Zeolites often form as crystals in small cavities in basaltic...

The German mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918) began a revolution in mathematics when invented the theory of sets in the 1870s. The parts of his theory dealing with infinite sets were the most controversial at that time. In an 1874 arti...

Zero discharge is the goal of eliminating discharges of pollutants by industry, government, and other agencies to air, water, and land with a view to protect both public health and the integrity of the environment. Such a goal is difficult...

A concept allied to, but less stringent than, that of zero discharge. Zero risk permits the release to air, water, and land of those pollutants that have a threshold dose below which public health and the environment remain undamaged. Such...

Quantum physics predicts the existence of an underlying sea of zero-point energy at every spot in the universe. This is different from the cosmic microwave background and is also referred to as the electromagnetic quantum vacuum, since it ...

ZEUS, the son of Kronos and Rhea, is the main divinity of the Greek pantheon. Besides Hestia, he is the only god in the Greek pantheon with an undisputed Indo-European provenance, to judge from his name: it derives from the root *dié...

ZHANG DAOLING, semilegendary figure of the second century CE, depicted in hagiographies as a master of long life (changsheng) who put his disciples to tests, vanquished demons, and prepared the elixir of immortality. He is said to have rec...

ZHANG JUE (d. 184 CE), founder of the Yellowa Turban sect. Zhang Jue was heir to the doctrines of Yu Ji, a sorcerer and healer who preached and practiced in Shandong and who was probably the author of the Taiping qingling shu (Book of Grea...