Ferenczi \'fer-ont-se\ Sandor (b. 1873, Miskolc, Hung., Austria- Hungary—d. 1933, Budapest, Hung.) Hungarian psychoanalyst. After receiving his M.D. from the University of Vienna and serving as an army doctor, he met Sigmund Freud in 1908 and became a member of Freud’s inner circle, the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. He founded the Hungar¬ ian Psychoanalytic Society in 1913 and began teaching psychoanalysis at the University of Budapest in 1919. He experimented with techniques of therapy and diverged from classic psychoanalytic practice in some respects (e.g., arguing that recovery of traumatic memories was not essen¬ tial for modifying neurotic behaviour and emphasizing the need for thera¬ pists to create a loving, permissive atmosphere). His works include The Development of Psychoanalysis (with Otto Rank; 1924).
Fergana Valley or Fergana Basin \,fir-g9-'na\ Large valley, west¬ ern Central Asia. It is mainly in eastern Uzbekistan and partly in Tajiki¬ stan and Kyrgyzstan and is situated between the Tien Shan system and the smaller Gissar and Alay ranges. It has an area of 8,500 sq mi (22,000 sq km). One of the most densely populated areas of Central Asia, it is a major producer of cotton, fruit, and raw silk. Among the mineral depos¬ its exploited are coal, petroleum, and mercury. It was conquered by the Arabs (8th century ad), Genghis Khan (13th century), and Timur (14th cen¬ tury). The khans of Kokand (see Qo'qon) ruled it from the late 18th cen¬ tury until it was absorbed by the Russian Empire in 1876.
Fergus Warrior king in the Ulster cycle of Gaelic literature. In The Cattle Raid of Cooley , Fergus, an exile from Ulster, recalls the deeds of the young Cu Chulainn. Another story tells of the revelation of the Tain in the 7th cen¬ tury by the ghost of Fergus. Fergus is also the subject of poems by William Butler Yeats. He is said to have been shipwrecked off the coast of Northern Ireland c. ad 320, at the place known as Carrickfergus (“rock of Fergus”).
Ferguson, Maynard (b. May 4, 1928, Montreal, Que., Can.) Cana¬ dian trumpeter and bandleader. Ferguson led a big band with his brother in his native Montreal while still a teenager. Moving to the U.S. in 1948, he performed with Jimmy Dorsey (1904-57), Charles Barnet, and Stan Kenton before forming his own big band in 1956. He became known for his mastery of the trumpet’s highest register. His recording of “Gonna Fly Now” from the film Rocky brought him commercial success in 1978. A versatile, energetic performer (he also plays many of the woodwind and lower brass instruments), he has inspired brass players for decades with his strong tone and sure technique.
Ferlinghetti \,fer-liq-'ge-te\, Lawrence (Monsanto) orig. Lawrence Ferling (b. March 24, 1919, Yonkers, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. poet. Ferlinghetti attended Columbia University and the Sorbonne. A founder of the Beat movement in San Francisco in the mid 1950s, he established the City Lights bookstore, an early gathering place of the Beats. The pub¬ lishing arm of City Lights was the first to print the Beats’ poetry. His own poetry—lucid, witty, and composed to be read aloud—became popular in coffeehouses and on college campuses. His collections include Pictures of the Gone World (1955), the widely popular A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), and Endless Love (1981).
Fermanagh Vfor-'ma-noX District (pop., 2001: 57,527), extreme south¬ western Northern Ireland. Located chiefly in the River Erne basin, it was established as a district within the boundaries of the traditional county in 1973; the district seat is Enniskillen. Settled from prehistory, Fermanagh has a scattering of megaliths, cairns, and early Celtic Christian antiquities. Devenish Island, in Lower Lough Erne, is the site of an ancient monastery. During the reign of James I (1603-25), many English Anglicans were settled there. It is one of the most important tourist areas in Northern Ireland.
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Fermat ► fern I 667
Fermat \fer-'ma\, Pierre de (b. Aug. 17, 1601, Beaumont-de- Lomagne, France—d. Jan. 12, 1665,
Castres) French mathematician. Of Basque origin, Fermat studied law at Toulouse and developed interests in foreign languages, Classical litera¬ ture, ancient science, and mathemat¬ ics. A jurist by profession, he produced major mathematical break¬ throughs independently and collabo- ratively. A contemporary of Rene Descartes, he discovered indepen¬ dently the basic principles of analytic geometry, but, because Fermat’s work was published posthumously, the field became known as Cartesian geometry. He found equations for tangent lines to curves through pro¬ cesses equivalent to differentiation and was coauthor (with Blaise Pascal) of PROBABILITY THEORY. His work in NUM¬ BER theory, especially divisibility, led to some of its most important theorems. He seldom demonstrated his results, which led to a centuries-long quest to prove a famous conjecture that Fermat claimed was easily shown (see Fermat's last theorem).
Fermat's last theorem Statement that there are no natural numbers x, y, and z such that jc" + y n = z", in which n is a natural number greater than 2. About this, Pierre de Fermat wrote in 1637 in his copy of Diophan- tus’s Arithmetical “I have discovered a truly remarkable proof but this margin is too small to contain it.” Although the theorem was subsequently shown to be true for many specific values of n, leading to important mathematical advances in the process, the difficulty of the problem soon convinced mathematicians that Fermat never had a valid proof. In 1995 the British mathematician Andrew Wiles (b. 1953) and his former student Richard Taylor (b. 1962) published a complete proof, finally solving one of the most famous of all mathematical problems.
fermentation Process that allows respiration to occur in the absence of oxygen. Biologically, it allows cells to obtain energy from molecules (e.g., glucose) anaerobically. Glycolysis, the breakdown of glucose, is a form of fermentation. Alcoholic fermentation occurs when yeast cells convert carbohydrate sources to ethanol and carbon dioxide. Fermenta¬ tion reactions are common in muscle cells, yeasts, some bacteria, and plants. See also beer; wine.
Fermi, Enrico (b. Sept. 29, 1901, Rome, Italy—d. Nov. 28, 1954, Chi¬ cago, Ill., U.S.) Italian-born U.S. physicist. As a professor at the Univer¬ sity of Rome, he began the work, later fully developed by P.A.M. Dirac, that led to Fermi-Dirac statistics. He developed a theory of beta decay that applies to other reactions through the weak force, which was not improved until 1957, when the weak force was found not to conserve parity. He dis¬ covered neutron-induced radioactivity, for which he was awarded a 1938 Nobel Prize. After receiving the award in Sweden, he never returned to fascist Italy but instead moved directly to the U.S., where he joined the faculty of Columbia University and soon became one of the chief archi¬ tects of practical nuclear physics. A member of the Manhattan Project, he was an important figure in the development of the atomic bomb; in 1942 he directed the first controlled nuclear chain reaction. He received the Congressional Medal of Merit in 1946. In 1954 he became the first recipi¬ ent of the U.S. government’s Enrico Fermi Award. Element number 100, fermium, was named in his honour.
Fermi-Dirac statistics In quantum mechanics, one of two possible ways (the other being Bose-Einstein statistics) in which a system of indis¬ tinguishable particles can be distributed among a set of energy states. Each available discrete state can be occupied by only one particle. This exclu¬ siveness accounts for the structure of atoms, in which electrons remain in separate states rather than collapsing into a common state. It also accounts for some aspects of electrical conductivity. This theory of statistical behaviour was developed first by Enrico Fermi and then by P.A.M. Dirac (1926-27). The statistics apply only to particles such as electrons that have half-integer values of spin; the particles are called fermions.