Bougainville \bu-ga n -'vel\, Louis-Antoine de (b. Nov. 11, 1729, Paris, France—d. Aug. 3, 1811, Paris) French navigator. In 1764 he estab¬ lished a colony for France in the Falkland Islands. Commissioned by the government to circle the Earth in a voyage of exploration, he put to sea in 1766; after touching Samoa and the New Hebrides he continued west into waters not previously navigated by any European. He turned north on the fringes of the Great Barrier Reef and did not sight Australia. He stopped in the Moluccas and in Java before returning to Brittany in 1769. His widely read Voyage Round the World (1771) helped popularize a belief in the moral worth of people in their natural state. He was secre¬ tary to Louis XV (1772), led the French fleet in support of the American Revolution, and was named to the Legion of Honour by Napoleon. The plant genus Bougainvillea is named for him.
bougainvillea ^bii-gon-'vil-yo, .bii-gon-'ve-oX Any plant of the genus Bougainvillea, comprising about 14 species of shrubs, vines, or small trees (family Nyctaginaceae) native to South America and hardy in warm cli¬ mates. Many species are spiny. Only the woody vines are widely popu¬ lar; showy cultivated varieties of several species are often grown indoors. The inconspicuous flowers are surrounded by brightly coloured papery bracts, for which one species, B. glabra, is called paperflower. The bracts of various species range from purple to lemon-yellow.
Bouguereau \bu-g9-'ro\, William (-Adolphe) (b. Nov. 30, 1825, La Rochelle, Fr.—d. Aug. 19, 1905, La Rochelle) French painter. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1846 and was awarded the Prix de Rome in 1850. On his return from Italy in 1854, he became a successful proponent of academic painting and was instrumental in the exclusion of the radical Impressionists from the official Salon. Working in a smooth, highly finished style, he painted sentimental religious works, coyly erotic nudes, allegorical scenes, and realistic portraits. In 1876 he was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts. His influence was felt widely, particularly in the U.S.
Bouillaud \bu-'yo\, Jean-Baptiste (b. Sept. 16, 1796, Garat, Fr.—d. Oct. 29, 1881, Paris) French physician and researcher. He established the speech centre’s location in the brain and differentiated between speech loss because of inability to create and remember word forms and inabil¬ ity to control speech movements. In cardiology, he established the con¬ nection between carditis and acute articular rheumatism. He helped explain normal heart sounds and described many abnormal ones, and he was the first to name and accurately describe the endocardial membrane and endocarditis. He published important books on heart diseases and on rheumatism and the heart.
Boukhara See Bukhara
Boukharouba, Mohammed ben Brahim See Houari Boumedi-
ENNE
Boulanger \bu-la n -'zha\, Georges (-Ernest-Jean-Marie) (b.
April 29, 1837, Rennes, France—d.
Sept. 30, 1891, Brussels, Belg.)
French general and politician. He entered the army in 1856, helped sup¬ press the Paris Commune (1871), and rose in rank to brigadier general (1880) and director of infantry (1882). Named minister of war in 1886, he introduced various military reforms and was seen as the man des¬ tined to avenge France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. In 1888 he led a short-lived but influential authori¬ tarian movement that threatened to topple the Third Republic. In 1889 the government decided to prosecute him, prompting him to flee Paris. He was convicted in absentia for treason, and in 1891 he committed suicide.
Boulanger \bii-la n -'zha\, Nadia (-Juliette) (b. Sept. 16,1887, Paris,
France—d. Oct. 22, 1979, Paris) French music teacher and conductor. Having studied composition with Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) and Gabriel Faur£, she stopped composing in her twenties (after the death of her sister, Lili, who was also a composer) and devoted the rest of her life to conducting, playing the organ, and teaching at the Ecole Normale (1920-39), Paris Conservatoire (from 1946), and especially the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau (from 1921). She became the most cel¬ ebrated composition teacher of the 20th century; her many students included Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Darius Milhaud, Virgil Thomson, Elliott Carter, Leonard Bernstein, and Philip Glass. Her sister, Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), wrote a remarkable amount of vocal and other music and was the first woman composer to win the Prix de Rome (1913).
Boulder City (pop., 2000: 94,673), north-central Colorado, U.S. Located at the base of the Rocky Mountains northwest of Denver, it was settled by miners in 1858 and grew with the arrival of two railroads in 1873. An extensive government-industrial-educational complex has developed since the 1950s. It is the site of the University of Colorado.
Boulder Dam See Hoover Dam
boule \'bu-le\ Deliberative council in the city-states of ancient Greece. It existed in almost all constitutional city-states, especially from the late 6th century bc. In Athens the boule was created as an aristocratic body by Solon in 594 bc; later, under Cleisthenes, 500 members were elected to represent the 10 tribes (50 each). A certain number, in rough proportion to size, were allotted to each deme. Complementing the work of the eccle- sia and Areopagus, the boule controlled finances, managed the fleet and cavalry, evaluated officials, received foreign ambassadors, and advised the strategus. The boule model largely influenced the organization of coun¬ cils of other cities in the Hellenic period.
boules \'biilz\ French ball game, similar to bowls and boccie. Players take turns throwing or rolling a steel ball as close as possible to a small target ball; an opponent’s ball may be knocked away if necessary. The playing field is called a pitch.
boulevard Broad landscaped avenue that typically permits several lanes of vehicular traffic as well as pedestrian walkways. The earliest
Georges Boulanger
H. ROGER-VIOLLET
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Boulez ► Bourgeois I 259
boulevards originally followed the city walls (the word originally meant “bulwark”) and were built in the ancient Middle East, especially at Anti¬ och. In Paris, straight and geometrically precise boulevards were incor¬ porated into design principles taught at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts, and they form a prominent feature of the city. Similar boulevards are found in other cities such as Washington, D.C. Formal curving boulevards are a feature of such cities as Vienna and Prague.
Boulez \bu-lez\, Pierre (b. March 26, 1925, Montbrison, France) French composer and conductor. Originally a student of mathematics, he later studied with the composer and organist Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. Inspired by the works of Anton Webern, in the 1950s he began to experiment with total serialism; his serialist music is marked by a sensitivity to the nuances of instrumental texture and colour. In 1954 he founded a series of avant-garde concerts, the Domaine Musicale. His important works include Le Soleil des eaux (1948), Structures I and II (1952, 1961), Le Marteau sans maitre (1957), Pli selon pli (1962), and three piano sonatas. By the 1960s he had gained an international reputation not only as a composer but also as a conductor, particularly of the 20th- century repertoire. He was chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orches¬ tra (1971-74) and conductor of the New York Philharmonic (1971-78). In 1974 he founded the French national experimental studio IRC AM. With his greatly varied activities, including his often iconoclastic writings, he was the principal figure of the postwar international musical avant-garde.