Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Sandage, Allan Rex

(Encyclopedia)Sandage, Allan Rex, 1926–2010, American astronomer, b. Iowa City, Iowa, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1953. He was a graduate student under Walter Baade and an assistant to Edwin Hubble....

Needham, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Needham, Joseph nēdˈəm [key], 1900–1995, British biochemist, historian of science, and sinologist, b. London. He had a lifelong association with Cambridge, where he was educated (Ph.D. 1924), tau...

Dudley, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Dudley, Joseph, 1647–1720, colonial governor of Massachusetts, b. Roxbury, Mass.; son of Thomas Dudley. In 1682 he was one of the agents sent to England to protest against the threatened loss of the...

X Prize Foundation

(Encyclopedia)X Prize Foundation, private, nonprofit prize institute est. 1995 by commercial space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis. Based in Santa Monica, Calif., and funded by foundations and private individuals and ...

Dyer, Mary

(Encyclopedia)Dyer, Mary, d. 1660, Quaker martyr in Massachusetts, b. England. She accompanied (c.1635) her husband to Massachusetts and supported Anne Hutchinson, whom she followed to Rhode Island, where her husba...

Gardiner, Sir Christopher

(Encyclopedia)Gardiner, Sir Christopher, fl. 1630–32, figure in the early history of the Massachusetts Bay colony. When the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts Bay in 1630, they found that Gardiner had preceded the...

Metropolitan Museum of Art

(Encyclopedia)Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, founded in 1870. The Metropolitan Museum is the foremost repository of art in the United States and one of the world's great museums. It opened in 1880 on it...

North Adams

(Encyclopedia)North Adams, city (1990 pop. 16,797), Berkshire co., NW Mass., in the Berkshire Hills, on the Hoosic River near the Vt. border; settled c.1737, set off from Adams and inc. 1878. It is located in a sum...

Oppenheimer, J. Robert

(Encyclopedia)Oppenheimer, J. Robert ŏpˈənhīˌmər [key], 1904–67, American physicist, b. New York City, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1925), Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1927. He taught at the Univ. of California and t...

Mather, Increase

(Encyclopedia)Mather, Increase, 1639–1723, American Puritan clergyman, b. Dorchester, Mass.; son of Richard Mather. After graduation (1656) from Harvard, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin (M.A., 1658), and pr...