Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Weismann, August

(Encyclopedia)Weismann, August ouˈgo͝ost vīsˈmän [key], 1834–1914, German biologist. He taught zoology at the Univ. of Freiburg from 1866 to 1912. He is known as the originator of the germ-plasm theory of he...

Shannon, Wilson

(Encyclopedia)Shannon, Wilson, 1802–77. American political leader, Mount Olivet, Ohio. A lawyer, he entered politics and was governor of Ohio (1838–40, 1842–44), minister to Mexico (1844–45), and a member o...

Wilson, Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Alexander, 1766–1813, American ornithologist, b. Scotland. He came to the United States c.1794, taught in rural New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and became a citizen in 1804. Encouraged by Willi...

Wilson, Benjamin

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Benjamin, 1721–88, English portrait painter and electrician who opposed Benjamin Franklin's theory of positive and negative electricity. Instead, Wilson supported Newton's gravitational-opti...

Wilson, Brian

(Encyclopedia) Wilson, Brian: see Beach Boys, The . ...

Wilson, Colin

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Colin, 1931–2013, English writer, b. Leicester. Born into a working-class family and largely self-educated, Wilson in many of his books exhorts humankind to expand its powers and realize its...

Wilson, Edmund

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Edmund, 1895–1972, American critic and author, b. Red Bank, N.J. grad. Princeton, 1916. He is considered one of the most important American literary and social critics of the 20th cent. From...

Wilson, Harold

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Harold (James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx), 1916–95, British statesman. A graduate of Oxford, he became an economics lecturer there (1937) and a fellow of University College (193...

Wilson, Henry

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Henry, 1812–75, American politician, Vice President of the United States (1873–75), b. Farmington, N.H. At 21 he legally changed his name from Jeremiah Jones Colbath, and as Henry Wilson h...

Wilson, Jack

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Jack: see Wovoka.