Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

173 results found

Penck, Albrecht

(Encyclopedia)Penck, Albrecht älˈbrĕkht pĕngk [key], 1858–1945, German geographer and geologist. He was professor at the Univ. of Vienna (1885–1906) and at the Univ. of Berlin (1906–26) and was director (...

Cronquist, Arthur C.

(Encyclopedia)Cronquist, Arthur C. krŏngˈkwĭst, krŏnˈ– [key], 1919–92, American systematic botanist. He was the author of two introductory botanical textbooks, with Henry Allan Gleason: The Natural Geograp...

Brongniart, Adolphe Théodore

(Encyclopedia)Brongniart, Adolphe Théodore ädôlfˈ tāōdôrˈ brôNyärˈ [key], 1801–76, French botanist; son of Alexandre Brongniart. He was a pioneer in the study of plant morphology and physiology and was...

thallophyte

(Encyclopedia)thallophyte, common name for members of the Thallophyta (or Thallobionta), a taxonomic group in some archaic classification systems that comprised algae, fungi, and lichens. The thallophytes were cons...

animal

(Encyclopedia)animal, any member of the animal kingdom (kingdom Animalia), as distinguished from organisms of the plant kingdom (kingdom Plantae) and the kingdoms Fungi, Protista, and Monera in the five-kingdom sys...

Caesalpinus, Andreas

(Encyclopedia)Caesalpinus, Andreas ändrĕˈä chāzälpēˈnō [key], 1519–1603, Italian botanist and physiologist. He was physician to Pope Clement VIII. He described, in part and as a theory only, the circulat...

Protista

(Encyclopedia)Protista prōˌtŏktĭsˈtə [key], in the five-kingdom system of classification, a kingdom comprising a variety of unicellular and some simple multinuclear and multicellular eukaryotic organisms. Pro...

de Candolle, Augustin Pyrame

(Encyclopedia)de Candolle, Augustin Pyrame də käNdōlˈ [key], 1778–1841, Swiss botanist. Considered the most important Swiss botanist of his era, de Candolle wrote on a wide variety of botanical topics, from m...

Austin, John Langshaw

(Encyclopedia)Austin, John Langshaw, 1911–60, British philosopher. A graduate of Oxford, he was a fellow of All Souls (1933–35) and Magdalen (1935–52) colleges before he became White's professor of moral phil...

boulder, in geology

(Encyclopedia)boulder, large rock fragment formed by detachment from its parent consolidated rock by weathering and erosion. In engineering and geology, especially in the United States, the term is applied to loose...

Browse by Subject