Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

234 results found

embryo

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Development of the human embryo embryo ĕmˈbrēō [key], name for the developing young of an animal or plant. In its widest definition, the embryo is the young from the moment of fertilizatio...

Escher, M. C.

(Encyclopedia)Escher, M. C. (Maurits Cornelis Escher) ĕsˈkhər [key], 1898–1972, Dutch artist. Primarily a graphic artist, Escher composed works notable for their irony, often with impossible perspectives rende...

Wilkinson, Sir Geoffrey

(Encyclopedia)Wilkinson, Sir Geoffrey, 1921–, English inorganic chemist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Ernst Otto Fischer for their independent research on the organometallic compounds of the t...

Bernstorff, Andreas Peter

(Encyclopedia)Bernstorff, Andreas Peter ändrāˈäs pāˈtər bĕrnsˈtôrf [key], 1735–97, Danish politician; nephew of Johann Hartwig Ernst Bernstorff. Made (1773) foreign minister after Struensee's fall from ...

Neruda, Jan

(Encyclopedia)Neruda, Jan yän nĕˈro͝odä [key], 1834–91, Czech essayist and poet, b. Prague. His popular Stories from Malá Strana (1878), tales drawn from his childhood in Prague and satiric portraits of mem...

Lorelei

(Encyclopedia)Lorelei lôrˈəlī, Ger. lōˈrəlī [key], cliff, 433 ft (132 m) high, on the right bank of the Rhine River, near St. Goarshausen, W Germany, about midway between Koblenz and Bingen. There the Rhine...

Tiryns

(Encyclopedia)Tiryns tīˈrĭnz [key], ancient city of Greece, in the NE Peloponnesus, 2.5 mi (4 km) N of Nauplia (now Návplion) and near Argos. The site seems to have been inhabited since the 3d millennium b.c. I...

Florey, Howard Walter Florey, Baron

(Encyclopedia)Florey, Howard Walter Florey, Baron, 1898–1968, British pathologist, b. Australia. He was educated at Adelaide Univ. and at Cambridge and Oxford and returned to Oxford as professor of pathology in 1...

Yverdon-les-Bains

(Encyclopedia)Yverdon-les-Bains ēvĕrdôNˈ-lā-bĕNˈ [key], Ger. Iferten, town (1990 pop. 22,758), Vaud canton, W Switzerland, at the south end of the Lake of Neuchâtel. It is an old spa with Roman ruins. Machi...

Ukrainka, Lesia

(Encyclopedia)Ukrainka, Lesia lāsˈyə o͝okrīnˈkə [key], 1871–1913, Ukrainian poet and dramatist, whose original name was Larysa Kvitka-Kosach. Ukrainka spent most of her life abroad fighting to recuperate f...