Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Smith, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Robert, 1757–1842, U.S. government official, b. Lancaster, Pa. Admitted to the bar in 1786, he practiced law in Baltimore before serving in the Maryland state senate (1793–95) and in the Ba...

Smith, Seba

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Seba, 1792–1868, American humorist, b. Buckfield, Maine. He founded the Portland Courier in 1829 and in it began (1830) a series of humorous letters on politics under the pen name Major Jack ...

Smith, Sydney

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Sydney, 1771–1845, English clergyman, writer, and wit, ordained in the Church of England in 1794. In 1798 he went as a tutor to Edinburgh, where he studied medicine, occasionally preached, an...

Smith, Theobald

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Theobald, 1859–1934, American pathologist, b. Albany, N.Y., M.D. Albany Medical College, 1883. He was professor of bacteriology at Columbian (now George Washington) Univ. (1886–95) and of c...

Smith, Tony

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Tony, 1912–80, American sculptor, b. South Orange, N.J., studied Art Students League, New York City (1933–37), New Bauhaus, Chicago (1937–38). Trained as a painter and architect and for a...

Smith, William

(Encyclopedia)Smith, William, 1769–1839, English geologist. Through direct observation as a canal-site surveyor, Smith made a systematic study of the geological strata of England and identified the fossils peculi...

Smith, Zadie

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Zadie, 1975–, British writer. The biracial daughter of an English father and Jamaican mother, Smith burst on the literary scene in 2000 with her first novel, White Teeth, the award-winning be...

Smith College

(Encyclopedia)Smith College, at Northampton, Mass.; undergraduate for women, graduate coeducational; chartered 1871, opened 1875 through a bequest of Sophia Smith. The first president, Laurenus Clark Seelye, was in...

Smith, Adam

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Adam, 1723–90, Scottish economist, educated at Glasgow and Oxford. He became professor of moral philosophy at the Univ. of Glasgow in 1752, and while teaching there wrote his Theory of Moral ...

Wayland Smith

(Encyclopedia)Wayland Smith, in English folklore, a skillful blacksmith and great armor maker, whose forge was near the White Horse (Oxfordshire). He appears in the Old English Beowulf and Deor and in Sir Walter Sc...