Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Rosenwald, Julius

(Encyclopedia)Rosenwald, Julius rōˈzənwôld [key], 1862–1932, American merchant and philanthropist, b. Springfield, Ill. He was president (1910–25), and later chairman of the board, of the mail-order house o...

Carlyle, Jane Baillie Welsh

(Encyclopedia)Carlyle, Jane Baillie Welsh, 1801–66, English woman of letters; wife of Thomas Carlyle, whom she married in 1826. She possessed a genius for letter writing, manifest in the volumes of her published ...

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

(Encyclopedia)Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, at Troy, N.Y.; coeducational; founded and opened 1824 as Rensselaer School; chartered 1826. It was called Rensselaer Institute from 1837 to 1861. The first private te...

Post, George Browne

(Encyclopedia)Post, George Browne, 1837–1913, American architect, b. New York City, grad. New York Univ., 1858, in civil engineering, and studied architecture with R. M. Hunt. He was one of the leaders in a notab...

Dick, Philip K.

(Encyclopedia)Dick, Philip K. (Philip Kindred Dick), 1928–82, American science-fiction writer, b. Chicago. Dick often wrote of the psychological states of individuals caught in altered realities where the everyda...

combinatorics

(Encyclopedia)combinatorics kŏmˌbĭnətôrˈēəl [key], sometimes called the science of counting, the branch of mathematics concerned with the selection, arrangement, and operation of elements within sets. Combi...

Chautauqua movement

(Encyclopedia)Chautauqua movement, development in adult education somewhat similar to the lyceum movement. It derived from an institution at Chautauqua, N.Y. There, in 1873, John Heyl Vincent and Lewis Miller propo...

Albee, Edward

(Encyclopedia)Albee, Edward ălˈbē [key], 1928–2016, American playwright, one of the leading dramatists of his generation, b. Washington, D.C., as Edward Harvey. His most characteristic work constitutes an absu...

Grooms, Red

(Encyclopedia)Grooms, Red (Charles Grooms), 1937–, American artist, b. Nashville, Tenn; studied Art Inst. of Chicago, Peabody College, New School for Social Research, Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. He moved to...

Browse by Subject