Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Onions, C. T.

(Encyclopedia)Onions, C. T. (Charles Talbut Onions), 1873–1965, English philologist, lexicographer, author, and editor. After a post with British Naval Intelligence in World War I, he held a fellowship at Magdale...

Preston, Lewis Thompson

(Encyclopedia)Preston, Lewis Thompson, 1926–95, American financial executive, b. New York City. After serving as a U.S. Marine during World War II and graduating from Harvard (1951), he joined J. P. Morgan. He be...

Day, John, English printer

(Encyclopedia)Day, John, 1522–84, English printer. At his London shop Day designed and made type for himself, but not for sale. His types included musical notes and the first Anglo-Saxon type. He printed the firs...

Richardson, Lewis Fry

(Encyclopedia)Richardson, Lewis Fry, 1881–1953, British physicist and pioneering meteorologist, grad. Cambridge (1903), Univ. of London (B.Sc. 1929). Richardson worked at the National Physical Laboratory (1902–...

Perl, Martin Lewis

(Encyclopedia)Perl, Martin Lewis, 1927–2014, American physicist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Ph.D. Columbia, 1955. He was a professor at the Univ. of Michigan from 1955 to 1963, when he accepted a position at Stanford; he...

John Day Dam

(Encyclopedia)John Day Dam, 219 ft (67 m) high and 5,640 ft (1,719 m) long, on the Columbia River between Oregon and Wash.; built between 1959 and 1968 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It is an extremely large ...

Day of the Dead

(Encyclopedia)Day of the Dead, Span. Día de los Muertos, annual festival in Mexico and other parts of Latin America, commonly on November 1st and 2d. Its ancient Mesoamerican roots now augmented by Christian custo...

Wyeth, N. C.

(Encyclopedia)Wyeth, N. C. (Newell Convers Wyeth), 1882–1945, American painter and illustrator, b. Needham, Mass., studied with Howard Pyle. Among his many well-known murals are those in the Missouri state capito...

Saint Valentine's Day

(Encyclopedia)Saint Valentine's Day, Western European Christian holiday, originally the Roman feast of Lupercalia. It was christianized in memory of the martyrdom of St. Valentine in a.d. 270, who, in medieval time...

Williams, C. K.

(Encyclopedia)Williams, C. K. (Charles Kenneth Williams), 1936–2015, American poet, b. Newark, N.J., grad. Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1959. He wrote more than 20 books of poetry, rich in detail, with complex syntax a...

Browse by Subject