Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman

(Encyclopedia)Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, American civil-rights workers in the South during the 1960s. Michael Schwerner (b. 1939) and Andrew Goodman (b. 1943), both white New Yorkers, went to Neshoba co., Miss...

Shelby, Isaac

(Encyclopedia)Shelby, Isaac, 1750–1826, American frontiersman, b. Washington co. (then part of Frederick co.), Md. Around 1773 he settled in the Holston River country in what is now E Tennessee. In the American R...

Banneker, Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)Banneker, Benjamin, 1731–1806, African-American inventor, astronomer, and mathematician, b. Baltimore co., Md., at what is now Ellicott's Mills. A free black, Banneker was essentially self-taught. H...

Sickles, Daniel Edgar

(Encyclopedia)Sickles, Daniel Edgar, 1819–1914, American politician, Union general in the Civil War, b. New York City. A lawyer, he became active in Democratic politics, serving in the New York legislature. He wa...

Dimitrov, Georgi

(Encyclopedia)Dimitrov, Georgi gĕôrˈgē dĭmēˈtrŏf [key], 1882–1949, Bulgarian Communist leader. A revolutionary from boyhood, he was a leader in the 1923 Communist uprising against Alexander Tsankov. When ...

Chu, Steven

(Encyclopedia)Chu, Steven, 1948–, U.S. physicist and government official, b. St. Louis, Mo., grad. Univ. of Rochester (B.S., A.B. 1970), Univ. of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 1976). He worked from 1978 at Bell Lab...

hydrofoil

(Encyclopedia)hydrofoil, flat or curved finlike device, attached by struts to the hull of a watercraft, that lifts the moving watercraft above the water's surface. The term is often extended to include the vessel i...

Hauptmann, Gerhart

(Encyclopedia)Hauptmann, Gerhart gĕrˈhärt houptˈmän [key], 1862–1946, German dramatist, novelist, and poet. He showed the influence of the theories of Zola and the plays of Ibsen in his play Before Dawn (188...

Franz Josef Land

(Encyclopedia)Franz Josef Land frăns jōˈzəf, fränts yōˈzĕf [key], Rus. Zemlya Frantsa Iosifa, archipelago, c.6,300 sq mi (16,320 sq km), in the Arctic Ocean N of Novaya Zemlya, Russia. It consists of more t...

Osheroff, Douglas Dean

(Encyclopedia)Osheroff, Douglas Dean, 1945–, American physicist, b. Aberdeen, Wash., Ph.D. Cornell, 1973. He was a professor at Cornell from 1973 to 1987, when he joined the faculty at Stanford. Osheroff was also...