Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Roland Holst, Henriëtte (van der Schalk)

(Encyclopedia)Roland Holst, Henriëtte (van der Schalk) hĕnrēĕtˈə vän dĕr skhälk rōˈlänt hôlst [key], 1869–1952, Dutch writer. Her early Sonnets and Poems Written in Terza Rima (1895) won praise for o...

lion

(Encyclopedia)lion, large carnivore of the cat family, Panthera leo, found in open country in Africa, with a few surviving in India. Lions have short-haired coats of tawny brown, with the tail ending in a dark tuft...

Rulers of the Roman Empire (table)

(Encyclopedia)Rulers of the Roman Empire(including dates of reign) Emperors in the East(until the fall of Rome; see table entitled Rulers of the Byzantine Empireat Byzantine Empire for later emperors) Empero...

Wickram, Jörg

(Encyclopedia)Wickram, Jörg yörk vĭkˈräm [key], c.1505–62, German writer. Wickram wrote Meisterlieder, farces such as Der treue Eckart [faithful Eckart] (1538), biblical drama such as Tobias (1550), and the ...

Germanus of Auxerre, Saint

(Encyclopedia)Germanus of Auxerre, Saint jərmāˈnəs, ōsĕrˈ [key], d. 448, Gaulish churchman, bishop of Auxerre (after c.418). St. Patrick was under his tutelage for 12 years. Popes Celestine I and Leo I sent ...

Josephson, Brian David

(Encyclopedia)Josephson, Brian David, 1940–, British physicist, Ph.D. Cambridge, 1964. After several postdoctoral appointments, he joined the faculty at Cambridge in 1974. Josephson was co-recipient, with Leo Esa...

Pius IX

(Encyclopedia)Pius IX, 1792–1878, pope (1846–78), an Italian named Giovanni M. Mastai-Ferretti, b. Senigallia; successor of Gregory XVI. He was cardinal and bishop of Imola when elected pope. For two years he p...

Hall effect

(Encyclopedia)Hall effect, experiment that shows the sign of the charge carriers in a conductor. In 1879 E. H. Hall discovered that when he placed a metal strip carrying a current in a magnetic field, a voltage dif...

Shklovski, Victor Borisovich

(Encyclopedia)Shklovski, Victor Borisovich vēkˈtər bərēˈsəvĭch shklôfˈskē [key], 1893–1984, Russian critic and writer. Shklovski was an exponent of the formalist school, which held that in literature o...

Oberth, Hermann Julius

(Encyclopedia)Oberth, Hermann Julius, 1894–1989, Austro-German astronautical pioneer, b. Hermannstadt, Austria-Hungary (now Sibiu, Romania). Beginning his studies in astronautics before World War I, he first prop...