Nucleus

Nucleus

/ˈnü-klē-əs/

Noun

1) a central or essential part around which other parts are grouped or collected, the core

“The family is the nucleus of civilization.”

– Will Durant (1885 – 1981)

2) something regarded as a basis for future development and growth

“Community is built around a nucleus of relationships…Because it’s through the activities that you do where you intersect, overlap, and meet up during the week with others that you build that continuous connection that then expands to become community as more nuclei of these relationships come together.”

– Becca Martenson

3) a complex, spherical, protoplasmic body within a living cell that contains the cell’s hereditary material and controls its metabolism, growth, and reproduction

“The nucleus cannot operate without a cytoplasmic field in which its peculiar powers may come into play; but this field is created and moulded by itself. Both are necessary to development; the nucleus alone suffices for the inheritance of specific possibilities of development.”

– from The Cell in Development and Inheritance, by Edmund Beecher Wilson (1856 – 1939)

4) (in physics) the positively charged central region of an atom, made up of protons and neutrons

“The birth of nuclear physics can properly be dated from the discovery of the nucleus by Rutherford in 1911.”

– from Nuclear Physics: A Status Report, by A. Zucker and D. A. Bromley