Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Garnier, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Garnier, Robert gärnyāˈ [key], 1534?–1590, French dramatic poet. He wrote mainly closet dramas in the classical manner of Seneca. Les Juives [the Jewish women] (1583), based on the Bible, is per...

Erskine, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Erskine, Robert, 1735–80, geographer and surveyor general to the American Revolutionary army, b. Dunfermline, Scotland. His several hundred detailed maps of the region W of the Hudson River, showing...

FitzRoy, Robert

(Encyclopedia)FitzRoy, Robert, 1805–65, British naval officer, meteorologist, and hydrologist. Given (1829) temporary command of the HMS Beagle, he completed a survey of the coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fue...

Fludd, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Fludd or Flud, Robert, 1574–1637, English mystic philosopher. Educated at Oxford and on the Continent, he became a London physician. Strongly influenced by the mystical doctrines of Paracelsus, he a...

Applegarth, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Applegarth, Robert, 1834–1924, English trade union leader, a carpenter by trade. A charter member of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, he became in 1862 its general secretary. Under...

Johnson, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Johnson, Robert, 1911–38, African-American blues singer, guitarist, and songwriter, b. Hazelhurst, Miss. A sharecropper's son, he grew up absorbing the music of Delta bluesmen, learning the harmonic...

Maxwell, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Maxwell, Robert (Ian Robert Maxwell), 1923–91, British business executive, b. Czechoslovakia as Jan Ludwik Hoch. He grew up in a tight-knit Jewish community. After fleeing the Nazis in 1939, Maxwell...

Mills, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Mills, Robert, 1781–1855, American architect of the classic revival period, b. Charleston, S.C. From 1800 to 1820 he worked as an architect in Washington, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, being associat...

Moses, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Moses, Robert, 1888–1981, U.S. public official, b. New Haven, Conn. He was appointed (1919) by Alfred E. Smith to the committee to study and revamp New York state government machinery, became (1924)...

Browse by Subject