Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Auerbach, Red

(Encyclopedia)Auerbach, Red (Arnold Jacob Auerbach) ouˈərbăkˌ, –bäkˌ [key], 1917–2006, American basketball coach and executive, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. As coach of the Boston Celtics (1950–66), he built the l...

Auerbach, Erich

(Encyclopedia)Auerbach, Erich, 1892–1957, German-American philologist, literary scholar, and critic, b. Berlin, Ph.D. Univ. of Greifswald, 1921. He is known primarily for Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in...

Auerbach, Berthold

(Encyclopedia)Auerbach, Berthold bĕrtˈhōlt ouˈərbäkhˌ [key], 1812–82, German novelist. He fought in the Revolution of 1848 and in the Franco-Prussian War. As a result of his Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten ...

red lead

(Encyclopedia)red lead, bright red to orange-red powder, also called minium, that is used in the manufacture of storage batteries, lead glass, and red pigments; a paint made with red lead is commonly used to protec...

Red Cross

(Encyclopedia)Red Cross, international organization concerned with the alleviation of human suffering and the promotion of public health; the world-recognized symbols of mercy and absolute neutrality are the Red Cr...

Smith, Red

(Encyclopedia)Smith, Red (Walter Wellesley Smith), 1905–82, American sportswriter, b. Green Bay, Wis., grad. Notre Dame, 1927. After working on newspapers in St. Louis and Philadelphia, he began a syndicated colu...

red bug

(Encyclopedia)red bug, name for various red insects or arachnids. Chief among them are the cotton stainer of the S United States, which pierces the seeds of the cotton plant and discolors the fibers, and the larva ...

Red Cloud

(Encyclopedia)Red Cloud, b. 1821 or 1822, d. 1909, Oglala Sioux chief, b. near the Platte River in present-day Nebraska. He led the Native American fight against the establishment of the Bozeman Trail (see Bozeman,...

red shift

(Encyclopedia)red shift or redshift, in astronomy, the systematic displacement of individual lines in the spectrum of a celestial object toward the red, or longer wavelength, end of the visible spectrum. The effect...

red giant

(Encyclopedia)red giant, star that is relatively cool but very luminous because of its great size. All normal stars are expected to pass eventually through a red-giant phase as a consequence of stellar evolution. A...