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KIEBY KIRCHHOFF 15 seas. In the first half of the 13th century the Mongolians founded the khanate of Kiptchak, which was synonymous with the empire of the Golden Horde, and reached from the interior of European Russia to the sources of the Sir Darya or Jaxartes. About the middle of the loth century, after Tamerlane's invasion, Ka- zan, Astrakhan, and Krim or Crimea fell off from Kiptchak, and formed independent khan- ates. Of these the first two were soon after absorbed by Russia, but the Crimea first be- came subject to the Ottomans, and was not annexed by Russia till the end of the 18th century. (See MONGOLIANS.) KIRBY, William, an English naturalist, born at Witnesham, Suffolk, Sept. 19, 1759, died at Barham, July 4, 1850. He graduated at Caius college, Cambridge, in 1781, took orders, and was appointed to the curacy of Barham. At the end of 14 years he became the rector of the parish. In 1802 appeared his Monographic Apium AnglicB (2 vols., Ipswich), the first sci- entific English work of its class. Several years later he joined Mr. Spence of Hull in a project for preparing a popular treatise on entomolo- gy, the result of which was the publication in 1815 of the first volume of " Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology;" the second volume appeared in 1817, and the third and fourth in 1826. In 1830 he produced a Bridge- water treatise on the " Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural Theology," and he subsequently wrote the description of insects in Sir John Richardson's Fauna Bore- ali-Americana, besides several minor works. His biography was written by the Rev. John Freeman (London, 1852). KIRCIIER, Athanasius, a German scholar, born near Fulda, Hesse-Cassel, May 2, 1602, died in Rome, Nov. 28, 1680. He was educated at the university of Wiirzburg, where he after- ward taught philosophy and the oriental lan- guages. After the invasion of Franconia by the Swedes in the thirty years' war he retired to France, and passed two years in the Jesuits' college at Avignon. He then went to Rome, where he was for eight years professor of mathematics. His most important works are : Prodromus Coptus sive ^Egyptiacus (Rome, 1636); Lingua JEgyptiaca Restituta (1644); and Latium (Amsterdam, 1671), with valuable maps and plans. He was a voluminous writer on mathematical and physical science, and his Mundus Subterraneus (2 vols., 1664-'8) com- prises all the geological knowledge of the day. He made many philosophical inventions, and collected a celebrated museum of instruments, lodels, natural objects, and antiquities, for the Fesuit college at Rome. This was described by Sepi (Amsterdam, 1679), and by Buonanni under the title Museum Kircherianum (fol., Rome, 1709; new ed. by Battara, 1773). KIRCHHEDI, or Kirchlieim-unter-Teek, a town of Wurtemberg, on the Lauter, and not far from the Teck, 18 m. S. W. of Ulm; pop. in 1871, 5,863. It has a royal castle, a large hos- 469 VOL. x. 2 pital, a house of refuge, iron works, and a sul- phur spring. Linen, cotton goods, musical in- struments, and other articles are manufac- tured; and there are important wool, sheep, and cattle markets. KIRCHHOFF, Gnstay Robert, a German physi- cist, born in Konigsberg, March 12, 1824. In 1845 he published an essay on the passage of the electric current through planes. He gradu- ated at Konigsberg in 1846, and in 1848 began lecturing in Berlin on mathematical physics, and published several elaborate articles on elec- trology. In 1850 he was appointed lecturer on experimental physics at Breslau, and in 1854 professor of natural philosophy at Hei- delberg, which chair he still occupies (1874). Between 1850 and 1858 he published numerous articles on magnetism, electricity, heat, and the tension of vapors; and in 1859 he made the discovery which has rendered him famous, the cause of Fraunhofer's lines in the solar spectrum. Euler a century ago, and in later years Talbot, Miller, Wheatstone, Foucault, Angstrom, Balfour Stewart, and Tyndall, had all been very close upon the discovery; but Kirchhoff (in Poggendorff 's Annalen, vol. cix., p. 275), was the first to propound and demon- strate the law: "The relation between the power of emission and the power of absorption of one and the same class of rays is the same for all bodies at the same temperature." This was the basis of his invention in 1860, in con- junction with R. W. Bunsen, of the new method of qualitative chemical analysis called spectrum analysis. (See SPECTRUM ANALYSIS.) He pub- lished Untersuchungen uber das Sonnenspec- trum und die Spectren der chemischen Ele- mente, which contains his views of the physi- cal constitution of the sun (Berlin, 1861 ; 3d ed., 1866) ; and with Bunsen, Chemisclie Ana- lyse durch Spectralbeobaclitung (Vienna, 1861). He and Bunsen together, by means of spectrum analysis, discovered two new metals, caesium and rubidium. In 1870 Kirchhoff became a foreign member of the Berlin academy of sci- ences; and subsequently the Prussian order pour le merite, the highest honor of its kind in Germany, was conferred upon him. Re- cently he has begun the publication of what is designed to be an elaborate work on mathemat- ical physics. The first part bears the title, Vorlesungen uber analytiscne Mechanilc, mit EinscJiluss der Hydrodynamilc und der Theorie der Elastizitdt fester Korper (Leipsic, 1874). KIRCHHOFF, Johann Wilhclm Adolf, a German philologist, born in Berlin, Jan. 6, 1826. He is a son of the historical painter Johann Jakob Kirchhoff. After teaching in a gym- nasium, he became in 1865 a professor in the university of Berlin, and in 1867 succeeded Bockh as a director of the philological semi- nary. His works include editions of Plotinus (2 vols., Leipsic, 1854) and Euripides (2 vols., 1855, and 3 vols., 1867-'8), Die homerische Odyssee und iJire Entstehung (1859), and Die Composition der Odyssee (1869). He is a high