Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

339 results found

nursery

(Encyclopedia)nursery, in horticulture, an establishment or area for the propagation, breeding, and early cultivation of plants. In North America the term nursery originally specified a place where hardy woody plan...

living will

(Encyclopedia)living will or advance health care directive, legal document in which a person expresses in advance his or her wishes concerning the use of artificial life support and other medical treatment should t...

Lovell, Sir Bernard

(Encyclopedia)Lovell, Sir Bernard (Sir Alfred Charles Bernard Lovell), 1913–2012, English radio astronomer, b. Oldland Common, Gloucestershire, England, Ph.D. Univ. of Bristol, 1936. He was a member of the cosmic...

rainmaking

(Encyclopedia)rainmaking, production of rain by artificial means now generally disregarded, though it is probable that rainmaking hastens or increases rainfall from clouds suitable for natural rainfall. Interest in...

imagists

(Encyclopedia)imagists, group of English and American poets writing from 1909 to about 1917, who were united by their revolt against the exuberant imagery and diffuse sentimentality of 19th-century poetry. Influenc...

Shannon, Claude Elwood

(Encyclopedia)Shannon, Claude Elwood, 1916–2001, American applied mathematician, b. Gaylord, Michigan. A student of Vannevar Bush at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he was the first to propose th...

cyanide

(Encyclopedia)cyanide sīˈənīdˌ [key], chemical compound containing the cyano group, –CN. Cyanides are salts or esters of hydrogen cyanide (hydrocyanic acid, HCN) formed by replacing the hydrogen with a metal...

Davis, Bette

(Encyclopedia)Davis, Bette bĕtˈē [key], 1908–89, American film actress, b. Lowell, Mass., as Ruth Elizabeth Davis. One of the most durable stars of the American screen, she made her debut in 1931. With a strik...

Turing, Alan Mathison

(Encyclopedia)Turing, Alan Mathison, 1912–54, British mathematician and computer theorist. While studying at Cambridge he began work in predicate logic that led to a proof (1937) that some mathematical problems a...

infant respiratory distress syndrome

(Encyclopedia)infant respiratory distress syndrome (IRDS) or hyaline membrane disease hīˈəlĭn, –līnˌ [key], respiratory distress syndrome of newborns, most common in infants born prematurely or by cesarean ...