gecko Any of about 750 species of harmless but noisy lizards in the family Gekkonidae: small, usually nocturnal reptiles that have soft skin, a short, stout body, a large head, and weak limbs often equipped with suction-padded digits. The pads contain tiny hairlike projections that cling to surfaces, allowing geckos to climb absolutely smooth and vertical sur¬ faces and even to run across ceilings. Most are 1-6 in. (3-15 cm) long, including the tail, and they are usually drably coloured, with gray, brown, or white predominating. They live in habitats ranging from deserts to rainforests in warm areas worldwide. Where kept as pets in houses or apartments, they are allowed to run free and eat undesirable insects.
Gedrosia Xyo-'dro-zhoN Historic region, South Asia. It was located west of the Indus River, in what is now the Balochistan region of Pakistan. In 325 bc Alexander the Great’s forces suffered disastrous losses there as they returned from India. They captured the area, but after Alexander’s death his general Seleucus I Nicator was forced to make peace by trading Gedro¬ sia and all his territories east of the Hindu Kush for 500 elephants. His departure ended Greek intervention on the subcontinent of India.
Geertgen tot Sint Jans Vgart-gon-tot-sint-'yansV (fl. c. 1475-1495, Netherlands, Hapsburg empire) Dutch painter. Little is known of his career. His name means “Little Gerard of the Brethren of St. John,” after the religious order in Haarlem of which he was a lay brother. His only documented work, the large triptych The Crucifixion, was painted for the Brethren’s monastery. Paintings attributed to him include a luminous noc¬ turnal Nativity and St. John the Baptist in the Wilderness.
Geertz VgortsV, Clifford (James) (b. Aug. 23, 1926, San Francisco, Calif., U.S.) U.S. cultural anthropologist, a leading proponent of a form of anthropology that stresses the importance of symbols and interpretation in human social life. Culture, according to Geertz, is “a system of inher¬ ited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms”—forms that serve to impose meaning on the world and make it understandable. Geertz’s writ¬ ings have been influential both within and outside of anthropology; they include The Religion of Java (1960), The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), Local Knowledge (1983), and Works and Lives (1988). He referred to his ethnographic methodology as “thick description.” Geertz taught at the University of Chicago (1960-70), among other institutions, and in 1970 joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., becom¬ ing an emeritus professor in 2000. See also cultural anthropology.
Gegenbaur Vga-gon-.baurN, Karl (b. Aug. 21, 1826, Wurzburg, Bavaria—d. June 14, 1903, Heidelberg, Ger.) German anatomist. A strong supporter of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, he showed that com¬ parative anatomy supplies evidence of it. His Elements of Comparative Anatomy (1859) stressed that structural similarities in different animals, especially parts with a common origin (e.g., human arm, horse’s foreleg, and bird’s wing), give clues to their evolutionary history.
gegenschein Vga-gon-.shlfo or counterglow Oval patch of faint light exactly opposite the Sun in the night sky, so faint it can be seen only in the absence of moonlight, away from city lights, with the eyes adapted
to darkness. It is lost in the light of the Milky Way except in February, March, April, August, September, and October. The gegenschein and the zodiacal light form the most notable parts of a band of very faint light along the ecliptic. Both phenomena are thought to be the result of the reflection of sunlight from interplanetary dust grains.
Gehrig Vger-igV (Henry) Lou(is) (b. June 19, 1903, New York, N.Y., U.S.—d. June 2, 1941, New York)
U.S. baseball player, one of the game’s great hitters. Gehrig attended Columbia University before joining the New York Yankees. From 1925 to 1939 the left-handed first baseman played in a record 2,130 consecutive games. He earned the nickname “the Iron Horse” long before this streak was over; Gehrig’s record was not broken until 1995 (see Cal Ripken). In 1932 Gehrig became the first player to hit four home runs in a single game, and he batted in 150 or more runs in a season seven times. In 1939 his physical abilities had begun to deteriorate and he took himself out of the lineup; he was diagnosed with AMYOTROPHIC LATERAL SCLEROSIS, which came to be known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He left baseball with a career batting average of .340 and 493 home runs. His 1,990 runs bat¬ ted in place him third in history, behind Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth.
On July 4, 1939, more than 60,000 Yankee fans turned out to recognize Gehrig’s achievements and heard him deliver a speech in which he claimed to be the “luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Gehrig was the first player to have his number (4) retired by his team.
Gehry \'ger-e\, Frank O(wen) (b. Feb. 28, 1929, Toronto, Ont., Can.) Canadian-born U.S architect. He studied at the University of Southern California and Harvard University. In his early buildings, his use of inex¬ pensive materials (chain-link fencing, plywood, corrugated steel) gave many of his projects an unfinished, whimsical air. His structures are often characterized by unconventional or distorted shapes that have a sculptural, fragmented, or collagelike quality. In designing public buildings, he tends to cluster small units within a larger space rather than creating monolithic structures, thus emphasizing human scale. Of particular note is his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1991-97) in Spain, a shimmering pile of sharply twisting, curving shapes surfaced in titanium. Gehry won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989.
Geiger Vgl-gorX, Abraham (b. May 24, 1810, Frankfurt am Main, Ger.—d. Oct. 23, 1874, Berlin) German Jewish theologian. He served as rabbi in Wiesbaden from 1832 and in Breslau 1838-63. He helped found a theological journal in 1835 and served as its editor. Geiger urged the need for simplified ritual, liturgy in one’s native language, and emphasis on the prophetic writings as the core of Judaism, and he stressed the pro¬ cess of change and growth in Jewish religious consciousness, a basic idea in Reform Judaism.
Geiger Vgl-g3r\, Theodor Julius (b. Nov. 9, 1891, Munich, Ger.—d. June 16, 1952, at sea) German sociologist. An early critic of the Nazis, Geiger fled to Copenhagen, where in 1938 at the University of Arhus he became Denmark’s first professor of sociology. He studied social strati¬ fication and mobility, examining Danish intellectuals and the people of Arhus. His posthumous Democracy Without Dogma (1964) expressed his vision of a society depersonalized by ideology but redeemed by human relationships.
Geisel Vgl-zoL, Theodor Seuss known as Dr. Seuss (b. March 2, 1904, Springfield, Mass., U.S.—d. Sept. 24, 1991, La Jolla, Calif.) U.S. writer and illustrator.He studied at Dartmouth College and did doctoral work at the University of Oxford. He began working in 1927 as a freelance cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. Under his pseudonym, Geisel began creating immensely popular children’s books peopled with outlandish invented creatures and brimming with nonsense words. And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street (1937), his first Dr. Seuss book, was followed
Lou Gehrig, 1939.
AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS
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by such huge successes as Horton Hatches the Egg (1940), The Cat in the Hat (1957), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957), Yertle the Turtle (1958), and Green Eggs and Ham (1960). Such perennial best-sellers, and his posthumous Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (1993), made him the best¬ selling children’s author in the world.
Geiger counter or Geiger-Muller counter Device used for detecting and counting individual particles of radiation. Invented by the German physicist Hans Geiger (1882-1945) and later refined with help from Walther Muller, the device is a gas-filled metal tube with a wire through its axis and a high voltage applied to the wire. As particles enter the tube, they create a large avalanche of ionization in the gas, which then discharges, creating a brief electric pulse. The tube produces the same large output pulse for virtually every charged particle that passes through the gas and so is useful for detecting individual particles. It can therefore indicate lower levels of radiation than is possible with other types of detectors.