Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

311 results found

Evans, Caradoc

(Encyclopedia)Evans, Caradoc, 1883–1945, Anglo-Welsh novelist and short-story writer. His chief works are his short-story collections, My People (1915), Capel Sion (1916), and My Neighbors (1919), and his novel N...

Providence

(Encyclopedia)Providence, city (1990 pop. 160,728), state capital and seat of Providence co., NE R.I., a port at the head of Providence Bay; founded by Roger Williams 1636, inc. as a city 1832. The largest city in ...

Coffin, James Henry

(Encyclopedia)Coffin, James Henry, 1806–73, American mathematician and meteorologist, was professor of mathematics and physics, Lafayette College, 1846–73. In an observatory which he built on Mt. Greylock, Mass...

Phillips Exeter Academy

(Encyclopedia)Phillips Exeter Academy ĕkˈsətər [key], at Exeter, N.H.; coeducational; chartered 1781, opened 1783 by John Phillips. It has been an influential preparatory school and has a notable school library...

Canonicus

(Encyclopedia)Canonicus kənŏnˈĭkəs [key], c.1565–1647, Native North American chief, who ruled the Narragansett when the Pilgrims landed in New England. He granted (1636) Rhode Island to Roger Williams and be...

Coddington, William

(Encyclopedia)Coddington, William, 1601–78, one of the founders of Rhode Island, probably b. Boston, England. He came to America in 1630 as an officer of the Massachusetts Bay Company and was its treasurer from 1...

Barker, Eugene Campbell

(Encyclopedia)Barker, Eugene Campbell, 1874–1956, American historian, b. Walker co., Tex. His distinguished teaching career, begun in 1899, was almost entirely at the Univ. of Texas. An outstanding social histori...

Scudder, Samuel Hubbard

(Encyclopedia)Scudder, Samuel Hubbard, 1837–1911, American entomologist, b. Boston, grad. Williams (B.A., 1857) and Harvard (B.S., 1862). The founder of American insect paleontology and an authority on Orthoptera...

Bliss, Sir Arthur

(Encyclopedia)Bliss, Sir Arthur, 1891–1975, English composer. Bliss's teachers included Charles Stanford, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Gustav Holst. He was made Master of the Queen's Musick in 1953. His early work...

utilitarianism

(Encyclopedia)utilitarianism yo͞oˌtĭlĭtrˈēənĭzəm, yo͞otĭˌ– [key], in ethics, the theory that the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined by its usefulness in bringing about the most happines...