liquid crystal display (LCD) Optoelectronic device used in displays for watches, calculators, notebook computers, and other electronic devices. Current passed through specific portions of the liquid crystal solu¬ tion causes the crystals to align, blocking the passage of light. Doing so in a controlled and organized manner produces visual images on the dis¬ play screen. The advantage of LCDs is that they are much lighter and consume less power than other display technologies (e.g., cathode-ray tubes). These characteristics make them an ideal choice for flat-panel dis¬ plays, as in portable laptop and notebook computers.
liquidity preference In economics, the premium that holders of wealth demand for exchanging ready money or bank deposits for safe, nonliquid assets such as government bonds. As first used by John May¬ nard Keynes, liquidity preference referred to the demand for money as an asset. He hypothesized that the amount of money held for this purpose would vary inversely with the rate of interest. Post-Keynesian analysis of
"The Madonna and Child with Two Angels/' by Fra Filippo Lippi, c. 1465; in the Uffizi, Florence
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liquidity preference has identified other factors that influence the demand for money, including income levels and the yields of various forms of wealth.
liquor See distilled liquor
Liri River \'le-re\ River, central Italy. It rises near Cappadocia and flows south and southeast through the Apennines. Joined by other rivers, it turns southwest to empty into the Tyrrhenian Sea near Minturno. It is 98 mi (158 km) long. During World War II, the Liri valley was invaded by Allies as part of their advance on Rome.
Lisbon Portuguese Lisboa City (pop., 2001: 556,797), capital of Por¬ tugal. The country’s chief seaport and largest city, it lies on the Tagus River near the river’s entrance into the Atlantic Ocean. It was under Roman rule from 205 bc; Julius Caesar made it a municipium called Felicitas Julia. Ruled by a series of barbarian tribes from the 5th century, it was captured by Moors in the 8th century. The Crusaders under Afonso I gained con¬ trol of it in 1147, and it became the national capital in 1256. It flourished as a leading European trading city in the 14th-16th centuries. One of the greatest earthquakes ever recorded struck Lisbon in 1755, killing 30,000. Urban renewal following the earthquake was unrivaled in scope. Lisbon hosted the World’s Fair (Expo ’98). It is a major commercial, adminis¬ trative, educational, and manufacturing centre. It was the birthplace of Luis Camoes.
tions was successful. By the time of his retirement in 1893, he had seen his principle accepted almost univer¬ sally. He is regarded as the founder of antiseptic medicine.
Lister, Samuel Cunliffe, Baron Masham (of Swinton)
(b. Jan. 1, 1815, Calverley Hall, near Bradford, Yorkshire, Eng.—d. Feb. 2, 1906, Swinton Park, Yorkshire) British inventor. His wool-combing machine (1845) helped lower the price of clothing and contributed greatly to the development of Aus¬ tralian sheep farming. Another invention (c. 1865) permitted the use of silk waste to make goods that could compete with those manufac¬ tured from the perfect cocoon and that could be sold at many times the cost of production. His velvet loom for making pile fabrics (c. 1878) was another important innovation.
Lisburn Town (pop., 1991: 42,110), seat of Lisburn district (pop., 2001: 108,694), Northern Ireland. Located on the River Lagan southwest of Bel¬ fast, it was a small village known as Lisnagarvey before English, Scots, and Welsh settled there in the 1620s as part of the Plantation of Ulster scheme. It later attracted French linen workers who introduced Dutch looms and reorganized the Ulster linen industry; the town is still an impor¬ tant linen-manufacturing centre. The district was created in 1973.
LISP Vlisp\ Powerful computer programming language designed for manipulating lists of data or symbols rather than processing numerical data, used extensively in artificial-intelligence applications. It was devel¬ oped in the late 1950s and early 1960s by a group headed by Jofin McCar¬ thy at MIT. Its name derives from “list processor.” Radically different from such other programming languages as ALGOL, C, C++, FORTRAN, and Pascal, it requires large memory space and is slow in executing programs.
Lissitzky, El or El Lisitsky orig. Lazar Markovich Lisitskii (b.
Nov. 10, 1890, Pochinok, near Smolensk, Russia—d. Dec. 30, 1941, Mos¬ cow) Russian painter, typographer, and designer. As a teacher at Marc Chagall’s revolutionary art school in Vitebsk, he met Kazimir Malevich, whose influence is seen in a series of abstract paintings that were Lissitz¬ ky’s major contribution to Constructivism. In 1922, after the Soviet gov¬ ernment turned against modern art, he went to Germany. There Theo van Doesburg and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy transmitted his ideas to the West through their teaching at the Bauhaus. In 1925 he returned to Russia and devoted himself to devising new techniques of printing, photomontage, and architecture.
List, (Georg) Friedrich (b. Aug. 6, 1789, Reutlingen, Wiirttemberg, Ger.—d. Nov. 30, 1846, Kufstein, Austria) German-born U.S. economist. He first gained prominence as the founder of an association of German industrialists that favoured abolishing tariff barriers between the German states. Exiled in 1825 for his liberal views, he went to the U.S. In his Out¬ lines of American Political Economy (1827) he maintained that a national economy in an early stage of industrialization required tariff protection to stimulate development. After becoming a U.S. citizen, he returned to Ger¬ many as U.S. consul at Baden (1831—34) and Leipzig (1834-37). His best- known work was The National System of Political Economy (1841). Financial and other difficulties eventually drove him to suicide.
Lister, Joseph later Baron Lister (of Lyme Regis) (b. April 5, 1827, Upton, Essex, Eng.—d. Feb. 10, 1912, Walmer, Kent) British sur¬ geon and medical scientist. He received a medical degree from Oxford in 1852 and became an assistant to James Syme, the greatest surgical teacher of the day. In 1861 he was appointed surgeon to the Glasgow Royal Infir¬ mary, where he observed that 45-50% of amputation patients died from sepsis (infection). Initially he theorized that airborne dust might cause sepsis, but in 1865 he learned of Louis Pasteur’s theory that microorgan¬ isms cause infection. Using phenol as an antiseptic, Lister reduced mor¬ tality in his ward to 15% within four years. Most surgeons were unconvinced until a widely publicized operation under antiseptic condi¬
Liszt \'list\, Franz Hungarian Ferenc Liszt (b. Oct. 22, 1811, Raid¬ ing, Hung.—d. July 31, 1886,
Bayreuth, Ger.) Hungarian composer and pianist. Encouraged by his father, who was a talented amateur musician, Liszt developed an early interest in music and began compos¬ ing at age eight. He studied piano with Karl Czerny and composition with Antonio Salieri in Vienna, mak¬ ing his debut there in 1822. After a Paris success in 1823, he toured Europe, but his father’s early death (1828) and a disastrous love affair led to a desire to give up music for the priesthood. Hearing violinist Nic- colo Paganini perform in 1831, Liszt was inspired to develop his own technique to the utmost and to com¬ pose his first mature pieces, includ¬ ing the Transcendental Etudes (1837) and Paganini Etudes (1839). An affair with Countess Marie d’Agoult resulted in the birth of his daughter, Cosima (1837-1930), who would marry his friend, the composer Richard Wagner. Liszt’s brilliance and success were at their peak during the 1840s, when he toured Europe as a virtuoso, earning great adulation for his panache and his astounding technique. He ceased concertizing in the late 1840s to devote himself to composition and furthering the work of progressive composers. In the 1850s he wrote many of his most ambi¬ tious works, including A Faust Symphony (1854) and the Piano Sonata in B Minor ( 1853). In 1865 he took minor Roman Catholic church orders, though he never became a priest. His later output is remarkable in antici¬ pating many 20th-century developments; for instance, his development of chromatic harmony influenced atonal music.