Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Noyce, Robert Norton

(Encyclopedia)Noyce, Robert Norton nois [key], 1927–90, American engineer, inventor, and entrepeneur, b. Burlington, Iowa.; grad. Grinnell College (B.A., 1949), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1953)...

Carter, Angela

(Encyclopedia)Carter, Angela, 1940–92, English writer. She was a newspaper reporter before studying at the Univ. of Bristol (B.A., 1965), where she explored medieval literature, Freud, surrealism, and feminism, a...

Blitzstein, Marc

(Encyclopedia)Blitzstein, Marc (Marcus Samuel Blitzstein), 1905–64, American composer, pianist, and librettist, b. Philadelphia. After attending the Univ. of Pennsylvania and the Curtis Institute of Music, he stu...

Waters, Muddy

(Encyclopedia)Waters, Muddy, 1915–83, African-American blues singer and guitarist, b. Rolling Fork, Miss., as McKinley Morganfield. As a teenager he began singing and playing traditional country blues on harmonic...

Moore's Law

(Encyclopedia)Moore's Law, a projection of semiconductor manufacturing trends made by Gordon E. Moore, cofounder of the Intel Corp., in a 1965 magazine article. He observed that the number of transistors per square...

Mekas, Jonas

(Encyclopedia)Mekas, Jonas, 1922–2019, Lithuanian-American avant-garde filmmaker, critic, and journalist. During and after World War II, he and his younger brother, Adolfus, were interned in labor and displaced-p...

Pasolini, Pier Paolo

(Encyclopedia)Pasolini, Pier Paolo pyĕr päˈōlō päsōlēˈnē [key], 1922–75, Italian writer and film director. A former Roman Catholic and a Marxist, Pasolini brought to his work a combination of religious ...

Noguchi, Isamu

(Encyclopedia)Noguchi, Isamu ēsäˈmo͞o nōgo͞oˈchē [key], 1904–88, American sculptor, b. Los Angeles. The son of a Japanese poet father and an American mother, he was a student of Gutzon Borglum and won Gug...

Catholic Emancipation

(Encyclopedia)Catholic Emancipation, term applied to the process by which Roman Catholics in the British Isles were relieved in the late 18th and early 19th cent. of civil disabilities. They had been under oppressi...

Poe, Edgar Allan

(Encyclopedia)Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–49, American poet, short-story writer, and critic, b. Boston. He is acknowledged today as one of the most brilliant and original writers in American literature. His skillfully...

Browse by Subject