Leo

Leo [Lat.,=the lion], northern constellation lying S of Ursa Major and on the ecliptic (apparent path of the sun through the heavens) between Cancer and Virgo; it is one of the constellations of the zodiac. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Arabs, and Greeks all represented this constellation as a lion; it may be the first constellation to be pictorially represented. The most famous star in Leo is Regulus (Alpha Leonis). The western part of the constellation is a curved line known as the Sickle; it represents the lion's head. The main constellation terminates in Denebola (Beta Leonis), the Lion's Tail. The meteor showers known as the Leonids appear to come from this constellation. Leo reaches its highest point in the evening sky in April.

Sowerby, Leo, 1895-1968, American composer and organist, b. Grand Rapids, Mich. Sowerby studied at the American Conservatory, Chicago, and with Percy Grainger. In 1921 an American Prix de Rome was created to enable him to study in Rome. In 1925 he became teacher of composition at the American Conservatory and in 1927 organist and choirmaster of St. James Episcopal Church, Chicago. A prolific composer, he wrote such important works as A Set of Four (1917), Symphony in B Minor (1927), and Symphony in F Sharp Minor (1940), for orchestra; a concerto (1938), for organ and orchestra; the oratorios The Vision of Sir Launfal (1925) and The Canticle of the Sun (1944); and Symphony in G (1932), for organ.

Friedlander, Leo, 1890-1966, American sculptor, b. New York City, studied in New York, Paris, Brussels, and at the American Academy in Rome. His many decorative works include sculptures on Washington Memorial Arch, Valley Forge, Pa.; reliefs for the National Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C.; the main central pediment of the Museum of the City of New York; facades for the Jefferson County (Ala.) Courthouse; groups for the RCA (now GE) Building, Rockefeller Center, New York City; and statues for the Oregon state capitol.

Frobenius, Leo, 1873-1938, German archaeologist and anthropologist. An authority on prehistoric art and culture, especially of Africa, he organized 12 expeditions to Africa between 1904 and 1935. In 1922 he founded the Institute for Cultural Morphology, Frankfurt, where he established a noted collection of facsimiles of prehistoric paintings and engravings. He also dealt with living African cultures and their folklore. He wrote The Voice of Africa (tr. 1913) and was coauthor (in English) of Prehistoric Rock Pictures in Europe and Africa (1937).

Caprivi, Leo, Graf von, 1831-99, German chancellor, whose full name was Georg Leo, Graf von Caprivi de Caprara de Montecuculi. A former army officer and head of the admiralty, he succeeded (1890) Bismarck as chancellor. Under him the antisocialist law was abrogated and military service was shortened from three to two years. Favoring industrial over agrarian interests, he negotiated (1892-94) a series of reciprocal trade agreements to stimulate industrial exports. The agreements reduced duties on agricultural products and aroused agrarian opposition to Caprivi, which contributed to his dismissal (1894). Prince Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst succeeded him as chancellor.

Tolstoy, Leo, Count, Rus. Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoi (lyĕf), 1828-1910, Russian novelist and philosopher, considered one of the world's greatest writers.

Early Life

Of a noble family, Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, his parents' estate near Tula. Orphaned at nine, he was brought up by his aunts and privately tutored. At 16 he was sent to the Univ. of Kazan, where he studied languages and law. His classes bored him, and he left without a degree. He returned to his estate in 1849 and made several abortive attempts to aid and educate the serfs there. Tolstoy then began a profligate life in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Early Works

In 1851 Tolstoy followed his brother into army service in the Caucasus, where he wrote Childhood (1852). This became the first part of an autobiographical trilogy, which includes Boyhood (1854) and Youth (1857). In 1854 he took part in the defense of Sevastopol, descriptions of which were published in Nekrasov's journal The Contemporary, attracting considerable attention for their unvarnished picture of war. He left army service in 1855 and for several years divided his time between his estate and the literary circles of St. Petersburg. His diary of the period reveals his intense dissatisfaction with his libertine existence. He set up a school for peasant children on his estate, emphasizing a spontaneous approach to learning. When his school proved impractical, he visited Western Europe and there began to question the bases of modern civilization.

In 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Andreyevna Bers, a young, well-educated woman who bore him 13 children. His candor concerning his infidelities and his harsh conception of her wifely duties contributed to the instability of their marriage. During this time he wrote The Cossacks (1863) and his masterpieces War and Peace (1862-69) and Anna Karenina (1873-76). War and Peace is a vast prose epic of the Napoleonic invasion of 1812. It illustrates Tolstoy's view of history as proceeding inexorably to its own ends, a view in which mankind appears as an accidental instrument. This thesis is conveyed by a stream of brilliantly conceived characters and incidents. Anna Karenina, his most popular work, concerns the tragedy of a woman's faith in romantic love.

Later Life and Works

About 1876 the doubts that had beset Tolstoy since youth, fed by his puritan temperament in conflict with his sensuality, gathered force. The result of his painful self-examination was his conversion to the doctrine of Christian love and acceptance of the principle of nonresistance to evil. The steps in his conversion are set forth in his Confession (1879). For the rest of his life Tolstoy dedicated himself to the practice and propagation of his new faith, which he expounded in a series of works, among them A Short Exposition of the Gospels (1881), What I Believe In (1882), What Then Must We Do? (1886), and The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1908).

Tolstoy preached nonviolence and a Rousseauistic simplicity of life. He was an anarchist to the extent that he considered wrong all organizations based on the premise of force, including both the government and the church. A Tolstoy cult grew up in Russia and abroad, and his estate became a place of pilgrimage. Because of his prestige the government did not interfere with his activities, although the Russian Church excommunicated him in 1901.

Moral questions are central to Tolstoy's later works, which include the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1884), the drama The Power of Darkness (1886), and the novel The Kreutzer Sonata (1889). To his last period belongs the essay What Is Art? (1897-98), in which he argued for the moral responsibility of the artist to make his work understandable to most people; he denounced acknowledged masterpieces, including his own earlier works. His last works also include the novels Hadji Murad (1896-1904) and Resurrection (1899-1900) and the drama The Living Corpse (pub. 1911).

Tolstoy's insistence on putting his beliefs into practice and abandoning all earthly goods led to a permanent breach between himself and his wife. His children, with the exception of the youngest daughter, Alexandra, sided with their mother. In 1910, at 83, Tolstoy left home with Alexandra without a specific destination. He caught a chill and died at the railroad stationmaster's house at Astapovo.

Burnett, Leo, 1891-1971, American advertising executive, b. St. Johns, Mich., grad. Univ. of Michigan (1914). He was a newspaper reporter and worked in advertising before moving to Chicago and opening (1935) his own ad agency, Leo Burnett Co., which he headed until 1967. Crafting ad campaigns that emphasized brand image, focused on the highly visual, stressed the essential quality of a product, and established strong emotional ties with the consumer, he was a prime developer of advertising's "Chicago school." Burnett's company was especially known for the creation, in the 1950s and 60s, of commercial icons that were particularly suited to symbolizing various products on the new medium of television. These included such characters as the Marlboro Man, the Jolly Green Giant, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Morris the Cat, and Tony the Tiger.

Strauss, Leo, 1899-1973, American philosopher, b. Hesse, Germany. Strauss fled the Nazis and in 1938 came to the United States, where he taught at the New School in New York City (1938-48) and the Univ. of Chicago (1949-68). He is known for his often controversial interpretations of political philosophers, including Xenophon, Plato, Maimonides, Machiavelli, Hobbes, and the framers of America's Constitution. He also wrote an influential critique of modern political philosophy, i.e., philosophy since Machiavelli, arguing that it suffers from an inability to make value judgments about political regimes, even about obviously odious ones. As a model for how political philosophy should proceed, Strauss held up the work of the Ancients, i.e., Xenephon and Plato. He defended the antihistoricist position that it is possible for a person to grasp the thought of philosophers of different eras on their own terms, i.e., unencumbered by presuppositions inherent in his own historical context. An influential teacher and philosopher, Strauss has been seen by some as the philosophical father of modern political neoconservatism, a theory that has been widely repudiated. Strauss's works include Natural Right and History (1952), Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), and The City and Man (1964).

Szilard, Leo, 1898-1964, American nuclear physicist and biophysicist, born in Hungary. He was educated at the Budapest Institute of Technology and the Univ. of Berlin, receiving a doctorate from the latter in 1922. Working at the Univ. of Chicago with Enrico Fermi, he developed the first self-sustained nuclear reactor based on uranium fission. Szilard was one of the first to realize that nuclear chain reactions could be used in bombs and was instrumental in urging the U.S. government to prepare the first atomic bomb, but he later actively protested nuclear warfare and supported the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Esaki, Leo, 1925-, Japanese physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Tokyo, 1959. Esaki was a researcher with IBM from 1960 until his retirement in 1992. He then served (1992-98) as president of the Univ. of Tsukuba in Japan, and in 2000 accepted a five-year appointment as president of the Shibaura Institute of Technology. Esaki received the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with Ivar Giaever and Brian Josephson, for his discovery in 1958 of the phenomenon of electron tunneling—in which an electron passes through a narrow region of a solid, where classical theory predicts it could not pass—in semiconductors. He exploited this effect to create the tunnel, or Esaki, diode, which has been used in a number of electronics applications, including microwave devices and computers.

Slezak, Leo, 1873-1946, Czech tenor, pupil of Jean de Reszke. After his debut as Lohengrin at Brno in 1896, he sang in Vienna, Berlin, and later at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City (1909-12). He was famous for his robust voice and physique, and he had a flamboyant sense of humor.

Baeck, Leo, 1873-1956, German rabbi and scholar. He studied at the conservative Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau and then at the liberal Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in Berlin, also attending the universities of Breslau and Berlin; at Berlin he studied philosophy under Wilhelm Dilthey. He held positions as rabbi in Oppeln (1897-1907), Düsseldorf (1907-12), and Berlin (1912-43). In 1943 he was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. After being liberated in 1945, he moved to London, becoming president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism; he also taught occasionally at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Baeck's works in English translation include The Essence of Judaism (1905, tr. 1936), The Pharisees and Other Essays (1947), and Judaism and Christianity (1958). In This People Israel (1955, tr. 1965), he propounded his belief in the eternal dialectical polarity between "mystery" and "command," the latter being the divine instructions that give concrete expression to the "mystery" in terms of man's obligations to others, which he defined as piety.

(born Feb. 11, 1898, Budapest, Hung., Austria-Hungary—died May 30, 1964, La Jolla, Calif., U.S.) Hungarian-born U.S. physicist. He taught at the University of Berlin (1922–33), then fled to England (1934–37) and the U.S., where he worked at the University of Chicago from 1942. In 1929 he established the relation between entropy and transfer of information, and in 1934 he helped develop the first method of separating isotopes of artificial radioactive elements. He helped Enrico Fermi conduct the first sustained nuclear chain reaction and construct the first nuclear reactor. In 1939 he was instrumental in establishing the Manhattan Project, in which he helped develop the atomic bomb. After the first use of the bomb, he promoted the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the control of nuclear weapons, founding the Council for a Livable World. In 1959 he received the Atoms for Peace Award.

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orig. Bruno, count von Egisheim und Dagsburg

(born 1002, Egisheim, Alsace, Upper Lorraine—died April 19, 1054, Rome; feast day April 19) Pope (1049–54). He was consecrated bishop of Toul in 1027. He was named pope by Emperor Henry III but insisted on election by the clergy and people of Rome. His efforts to strengthen the papacy and eradicate clerical marriage and simony laid the foundation for the Gregorian reform movement. His assertion of papal primacy and his military campaign against the Normans in Sicily (1053) alienated the Eastern church. His representatives excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople. Though Leo had already died, their act triggered the Schism of 1054.

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known as Leo the Great

(born 4th century, Tuscany?—died Nov. 10, 461, Rome; Western feast day November 10, Eastern feast day February 18) Pope (440–461). He was a champion of orthodoxy and a Doctor of the Church. When the monk Eutyches of Constantinople asserted that Jesus Christ had only a single divine nature, Leo wrote the Tome, which established the coexistence of Christ's human and divine natures. Leo's teachings were embraced by the Council of Chalcedon (451), which also accepted his teaching as the “voice of Peter.” Leo dealt capably with the invasions of barbaric tribes, persuading the Huns not to attack Rome (452) and the Vandals not to sack the city (455). Leo was also an exponent of the precept of papal primacy, and his personal example and letters and sermons contributed greatly to the growth of papal authority.

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orig. Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci

(born March 2, 1810, Carpineto Romano, Papal States—died July 20, 1903, Rome) Pope (1878–1903). Born into the Italian nobility, he was ordained a priest in 1837 and entered the diplomatic service of the Papal States. He was appointed bishop of Perugia in 1846 and was named a cardinal in 1853. He was elected pope in 1878, and, despite his advanced age and frail health, he directed the church for a quarter of a century. Like his predecessor, Pius IX, he opposed Freemasonry and secular liberalism, but he brought a new spirit to the papacy by adopting a conciliatory attitude toward civil governments and taking a more positive view of scientific progress.

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orig. Giovanni de' Medici

(born Dec. 1, 1475, Florence—died Dec. 1, 1521, Rome) Pope (1513–21), one of the most extravagant of the Renaissance pontiffs. The second son of Lorenzo de' Medici, he was educated at his father's court in Florence and at the University of Pisa. He was named a cardinal in 1492, and in 1494 he was exiled from Florence by the revolt of Girolamo Savonarola. He returned in 1500 and soon consolidated Medici control of the city. As pope, he became a patron of the arts, accelerating construction of St. Peter's Basilica. He strengthened the papacy's political power in Europe, but his lavish spending depleted his treasury. He discouraged reforms at the fifth Lateran Council, and he responded inadequately to the Reformation, excommunicating Martin Luther in 1521 and failing to address the need for change, a lapse that signaled the end of the unified Western church.

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(born Feb. 11, 1898, Budapest, Hung., Austria-Hungary—died May 30, 1964, La Jolla, Calif., U.S.) Hungarian-born U.S. physicist. He taught at the University of Berlin (1922–33), then fled to England (1934–37) and the U.S., where he worked at the University of Chicago from 1942. In 1929 he established the relation between entropy and transfer of information, and in 1934 he helped develop the first method of separating isotopes of artificial radioactive elements. He helped Enrico Fermi conduct the first sustained nuclear chain reaction and construct the first nuclear reactor. In 1939 he was instrumental in establishing the Manhattan Project, in which he helped develop the atomic bomb. After the first use of the bomb, he promoted the peaceful uses of atomic energy and the control of nuclear weapons, founding the Council for a Livable World. In 1959 he received the Atoms for Peace Award.

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orig. Bruno, count von Egisheim und Dagsburg

(born 1002, Egisheim, Alsace, Upper Lorraine—died April 19, 1054, Rome; feast day April 19) Pope (1049–54). He was consecrated bishop of Toul in 1027. He was named pope by Emperor Henry III but insisted on election by the clergy and people of Rome. His efforts to strengthen the papacy and eradicate clerical marriage and simony laid the foundation for the Gregorian reform movement. His assertion of papal primacy and his military campaign against the Normans in Sicily (1053) alienated the Eastern church. His representatives excommunicated the patriarch of Constantinople. Though Leo had already died, their act triggered the Schism of 1054.

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known as Leo the Isaurian

(born circa 675, Germanicia, Commagene, Syria—died June 18, 742, Constantinople) Byzantine emperor (717–41), founder of the Isaurian dynasty. A high-ranking military commander, he seized the throne with the help of Arab armies who hoped to subjugate the Byzantine Empire. He then successfully defended Constantinople against the Arabs (717–718). Having crowned his son Constantine V coemperor (720), Leo used his son's marriage to cement an alliance with the Khazars. Victory over the Arabs at Akroïnos (740) was crucial in preventing their conquest of Asia Minor. Leo issued an important legal code, the Ecloga (726). His policy of iconoclasm (730), which banned the use of sacred images in churches, engendered a century of conflict within the empire and further strained relations with the pope in Rome.

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known as Leo the Great

(born 4th century, Tuscany?—died Nov. 10, 461, Rome; Western feast day November 10, Eastern feast day February 18) Pope (440–461). He was a champion of orthodoxy and a Doctor of the Church. When the monk Eutyches of Constantinople asserted that Jesus Christ had only a single divine nature, Leo wrote the Tome, which established the coexistence of Christ's human and divine natures. Leo's teachings were embraced by the Council of Chalcedon (451), which also accepted his teaching as the “voice of Peter.” Leo dealt capably with the invasions of barbaric tribes, persuading the Huns not to attack Rome (452) and the Vandals not to sack the city (455). Leo was also an exponent of the precept of papal primacy, and his personal example and letters and sermons contributed greatly to the growth of papal authority.

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(born Nov. 14, 1863, Ghent, Belg.—died Feb. 23, 1944, Beacon, N.Y., U.S.) Belgian-born U.S. industrial chemist. A teacher of chemistry in Belgium, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1889. He invented Velox, the first commercially successful photographic paper, which could be developed under artificial light, and sold the rights to George Eastman for $1 million in 1899. His search for a substitute for shellac led to the discovery in 1909 of a method of forming a hard thermosetting plastic, which he named Bakelite, produced from formaldehyde and phenol. His discovery helped found the modern plastics industry.

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(born May 23, 1873, Lissa, Posen, Prussia—died Nov. 2, 1956, London, Eng.) Prussian-Polish rabbi, spiritual leader of German Jewry during the Nazi period. After earning his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Berlin, he served as a rabbi in Silesia, Düsseldorf, and Berlin, becoming the leading liberal Jewish religious thinker of his time. He synthesized Neo-Kantianism and rabbinic ethics in The Essence of Judaism (1905) and considered the Christian gospels as rabbinic literature in The Gospel as a Document of Jewish Religious History (1938). He negotiated with the Nazis to buy time for the German Jews; finally arrested, he was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he wrote and lectured on Plato and Immanuel Kant. Liberated in 1945 on the day before he was to be executed, he settled in England.

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(Latin: “Lion”) In astronomy, the constellation lying between Cancer and Virgo; in astrology, the fifth sign of the zodiac, governing approximately the period July 23–August 22. Its symbol, a lion, has been associated with the Nemean lion slain by Heracles. The Nemean lion was considered invulnerable because its skin was impervious to arrows, but Heracles battered it to death with a club. Zeus put the lion in the sky as a constellation.

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(born Feb. 24, 1831, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Prussia—died Feb. 6, 1899, near Crossen-an-der-Oder, Ger.) German soldier and politician. A distinguished soldier, he served as chief of the admiralty (1883–88). He succeeded Otto von Bismarck as Germany's imperial chancellor (1890–94) and Prussian minister president (1890–92). His achievements included an Anglo-German agreement concerning spheres of influence in Africa, commercial treaties with Austria, Romania, and other states, and the reorganization of the German army.

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(born Nov. 14, 1863, Ghent, Belg.—died Feb. 23, 1944, Beacon, N.Y., U.S.) Belgian-born U.S. industrial chemist. A teacher of chemistry in Belgium, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1889. He invented Velox, the first commercially successful photographic paper, which could be developed under artificial light, and sold the rights to George Eastman for $1 million in 1899. His search for a substitute for shellac led to the discovery in 1909 of a method of forming a hard thermosetting plastic, which he named Bakelite, produced from formaldehyde and phenol. His discovery helped found the modern plastics industry.

Learn more about Baekeland, Leo (Hendrik) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born May 23, 1873, Lissa, Posen, Prussia—died Nov. 2, 1956, London, Eng.) Prussian-Polish rabbi, spiritual leader of German Jewry during the Nazi period. After earning his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Berlin, he served as a rabbi in Silesia, Düsseldorf, and Berlin, becoming the leading liberal Jewish religious thinker of his time. He synthesized Neo-Kantianism and rabbinic ethics in The Essence of Judaism (1905) and considered the Christian gospels as rabbinic literature in The Gospel as a Document of Jewish Religious History (1938). He negotiated with the Nazis to buy time for the German Jews; finally arrested, he was sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he wrote and lectured on Plato and Immanuel Kant. Liberated in 1945 on the day before he was to be executed, he settled in England.

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LEO as an acronym may refer to:

• Low Earth orbit
• Law Enforcement Officer
• Louisville Eccentric Observer, an alternative urban newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky
• LEO (computer), a British computer (the LEO I, or Lyons Electronic Office I)
• LEO (spacecraft), a proposed German lunar mission
• LEO (website), meaning "link everything online" , a website featuring free online dictionaries

See also

• Leo (disambiguation)