aurora Luminous phenomenon of the upper atmosphere that occurs pri¬ marily at high latitudes. Auroras in the Northern Hemisphere are called aurora borealis, or northern lights; in the Southern Hemisphere they are called aurora australis, or southern lights. Auroras are caused by the inter¬ action of energetic particles (electrons and protons) from outside the atmo¬ sphere with atoms of the upper atmosphere. Such interaction occurs in zones surrounding the Earth’s magnetic poles. During periods of intense solar activity, auroras occasionally extend to the middle latitudes.
Aurora City (pop., 2000: 276,393), north-central Colorado, U.S. It was founded near Denver as Fletcher during the silver boom of 1891 and renamed in 1907. Though mainly residential, it is also the site of Buck- ley Air National Guard Base.
Auschwitz \'aush-,vits\ or Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Germany’s largest concentration camp and extermination camp, located in southern Poland (modern Oswi^cim). It consisted of three camps (prison, extermi¬ nation, and forced labour), established in 1940, 1941 (Birkenau), and 1942. Able-bodied Jewish prisoners were sent to a slave-labour camp, while the aged, the weak, and children and their mothers were killed. Some prisoners were also subjected to medical experiments, conducted by Josef Mengele. The camp was gradually abandoned in 1944^45 as Soviet troops advanced. The total number who died at Auschwitz is esti¬ mated at between 1.1 million and 1.5 million, 90% of which were Jews; also among the dead were some 19,000 Roma (Gypsies), who were killed in July 1944, and some 83,000 Poles. Much of the camp was later con¬ verted into a museum and memorial. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. See also Holocaust.
auscultation V.o-skol-'ta-shonV Procedure for detecting certain defects or conditions by listening for normal and abnormal heart, breath, bowel, fetal, and other sounds in the body. The invention of the stethoscope in 1819 improved and expanded this practice, still very useful despite the great technological advances in other means of diagnosis.
Ausgleich See Compromise of 1867
Austen, Jane (b. Dec. 16, 1775, Steventon, Hampshire, Eng.—d. July 18, 1817, Winchester, Hampshire)
English novelist. The daughter of a rector, she lived in the circumscribed world of minor landed gentry and country clergy that she was to use in her writing; her closest companion was her sister, Cassandra. Her earli¬ est known writings are mainly paro¬ dies, notably of sentimental fiction.
In her six full-length novels— Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1815), Persuasion (1817), and Northanger Abbey (pub¬ lished 1817 but written before the others)—she created the comedy of manners of middle-class English life in her time. Her writing is noted for its wit, realism, shrewd sympathy, and brilliant prose style. Through her treatment of ordinary people in everyday life, she was the first to give the novel its distinctly modem character. She published her novels anonymously; two appeared only after her death, which probably resulted from Addison disease.
Aurangzeb, Mughal miniature, 17th century; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
BY COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, BEQUEST OF GEORGE D. PRATT, 1945
Cave painting of a bull and horse; in Lascaux Grotto, near Montignac, France.
HANS HINZ, BASEL
c ..
Jane Austen, pencil and watercolour by Cassandra Austen, c. 1810; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Austerlitz ► Australian Alps I 133
Austerlitz, Battle of (Dec. 2, 1805) First engagement of the War of the Third Coalition and one of Napoleon’s greatest victories. In the battle, fought near Austerlitz in Moravia (now Slavkov u Brna, Czech Rep.), Napoleon’s 68,000 troops defeated almost 90,000 Russians and Austrians under Russia’s Alexander I and Mikhail Kutuzov. Also called the Battle of the Three Emperors, Napoleon’s resounding victory forced Austria’s Francis I to conclude the Treaty of Pressburg, ceding Venetia to the French kingdom in Italy and temporarily ending the anti-French alliance. See also Napoleonic Wars.
Austin City (pop., 2000: 656,600), capital of Texas, U.S. It was founded in 1835 as the village of Waterloo on the Colorado River in south-central Texas. In 1839 it was made capital of the Republic of Texas and renamed to honour Stephen Austin; when Texas became a state in 1845, Austin was its capital. As the home of the University of Texas, it has expanded as a research and development centre for defense, high-technology, and con¬ sumer industries. The Lyndon B. Johnson Library is on the university campus.
Austin, J(ohn) L(angshaw) (b. March 28, 1911, Lancaster, Lancash¬ ire, Eng.—d. Feb. 8, 1960, Oxford) British philosopher. He taught at Oxford from 1945 until his death. He was a leading member of the “ordi¬ nary language,” or “Oxford,” movement of analytic philosophy, which was characterized by its belief that philosophical problems frequently arise through inattention to or misunderstandings of ordinary uses of language; accordingly, such problems can be resolved through consideration of the ordinary uses of the terms by which the relevant philosophical concepts are expressed. Ordinary-language analyses by Austin and his followers fre¬ quently took the form of asking “what one would say” in various concrete situations. Austin was also the inventor of speech act theory, through which he attempted to account for the various “performative” aspects of conveyed linguistic meaning. Several of his essays and lectures were published post¬ humously in Philosophical Papers (1961), Sense and Sensibilia (1962), and How to Do Things with Words (1962). See also analytic philosophy.
Austin, John (b. March 3, 1790, Creeting Mill, Suffolk, Eng.—d. Dec. 1859, Weybridge, Surrey) British jurist. Although initially unsuccessful in his law practice (1818-25), his analytical mind and intellectual hon¬ esty impressed colleagues, and he was named the first professor of juris¬ prudence at University College, London (1826). Distinguished men attended his lectures, but he failed to attract students, and he resigned his chair in 1832. His writings, especially The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), sought to distinguish law from morality. He also helped to define jurisprudence as the analysis of fundamental legal con¬ cepts, as distinct from the criticism of legal institutions, which he called the “science of legislation.” His work, largely unrecognized in his life¬ time, influenced later jurists, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Austin, Stephen (Fuller) (b. Nov. 3, 1793, Austinville, Va., U.S.—d. Dec. 27, 1836, Austin, Texas) U.S. founder of the first legal colony of English-speaking people in Texas when it was still part of Mexico. He was raised in the Missouri Territory and served in its legislature (1814— 19). The economic panic in 1819 led his father to conceive a plan to colo¬ nize Texas on land obtained from the Mexican government. Austin continued the project after his father died (1821) and founded a colony of several hundred families on the Brazos River in 1822. He maintained good relations with the Mexican government. He tried to induce the Mexi¬ can government to make Texas a separate state in the Mexican confed¬ eration; when this attempt failed, he recommended in 1833 the organization of a state without waiting for the consent of the Mexican congress, and he was imprisoned. Released in 1835, he traveled to the U.S. to secure help when the Texas revolution broke out in October of that year. He is considered one of the state’s founders. The city of Austin is named for him.