Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Prodi, Romano

(Encyclopedia)Prodi, Romano rōmäˈnō prōˈdē [key], 1939–, Italian politician, premier of Italy (1996–98, 2006–8), b. Scandiano. Educated at the Catholic Univ. of Milan (grad. 1961), he. He is a trained ...

Holy Alliance

(Encyclopedia)Holy Alliance, 1815, agreement among the emperors of Russia and Austria and the king of Prussia, signed on Sept. 26. It was quite distinct from the Quadruple Alliance (Quintuple, after the admission o...

Soares, Mário

(Encyclopedia)Soares, Mário (Mário Alberto Nobre Lópes Soares) mäˈryo͝o swäˈrəsh [key], 1924–2017, Portuguese politician. Soares rose to prominence as a vocal critic of the regime of António Salazar and...

war debts

(Encyclopedia)war debts. This article discusses the obligations incurred by foreign governments for loans made to them by the United States during and shortly after World War I. For international obligations arisin...

Laban, Rudolf von

(Encyclopedia)Laban, Rudolf von fôn läbˈän [key], 1879–1958, Slovakian dancer, choreographer, and dance theorist. After studying in Paris and performing in N Africa, Germany, and Austria, he founded (1910) a ...

Torvalds, Linus Benedict

(Encyclopedia)Torvalds, Linus Benedict, 1969–, Finnish-American computer software engineer. A member of Finland's Swedish-speaking minority, he attended the Univ. of Helsinki (M.S., 1996), where he also taught. I...

pound

(Encyclopedia)pound, abbr. lb, unit of either mass or force in the customary system of English units of measurement. Two different pounds of mass are defined, one in the avoirdupois system of units and one in the T...

center of mass

(Encyclopedia)center of mass, the point at which all the mass of a body may be considered to be concentrated in analyzing its motion. The center of mass of a sphere of uniform density coincides with the center of t...

thermodynamics

(Encyclopedia)thermodynamics, branch of science concerned with the nature of heat and its conversion to mechanical, electric, and chemical energy. Historically, it grew out of efforts to construct more efficient he...

gram

(Encyclopedia)gram, abbr. g, unit of mass equal to 0.001 kilogram, the basic unit of mass in the metric system. The gram is the unit of mass in the cgs system. It is approximately equal to 0.035 avoirdupois ounce, ...