Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Christie, Dame Agatha

(Encyclopedia)Christie, Dame Agatha, 1890–1976, English detective story writer, b. Torquay, Devon, as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. Christie's second husband was the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, and she gained ...

Gombrich, E. H.

(Encyclopedia)Gombrich, E. H. (Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich), 1909–2001, British art historian and scholar, b. Vienna, grad. Univ. of Vienna (1933). From a culturally prominent Austrian-Jewish family, he fled German...

power, in physics

(Encyclopedia)power, in physics, time rate of doing work or of producing or expending energy. The unit of power based on the English units of measurement is the horsepower, devised for describing mechanical power b...

noddy

(Encyclopedia)noddy, tropical tern including five species in the genus Anous. The name noddy is said to derive from their easy familiarity with man. Noddies are web-footed seabirds with long wings (though shorter t...

Oberlin, Russell Keys

(Encyclopedia)Oberlin, Russell Keys, 1928–2016, American countertenor, b. Akron, Ohio, grad. Juilliard, 1951. A boy soprano, he sang in his church choir and on the radio, and won a nationwide radio talent competi...

Morante, Elsa

(Encyclopedia)Morante, Elsa ĕlˈsə môränˈtā [key], c.1912–85, Italian novelist and poet; wife of Alberto Moravia. Her prose style, which is indebted to surrealism and magic realism, is characterized by the ...

Motley, Archibald John, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Motley, Archibald John, Jr., 1891–1981, African American artist, b. New Orleans, grad. Art Institute of Chicago (1918). He was an important figure in the early Harlem Renaissance, though he spent mo...

Rich, Adrienne

(Encyclopedia)Rich, Adrienne, 1929–2012, American poet, b. Baltimore, grad. Radcliffe, 1951. From the 1970s her exquisitely wrought verse became looser and more personal as her works increasingly reflected femini...

shearwater

(Encyclopedia)shearwater, common name for members of the family Procellariidae, gull-like sea birds related to the petrel and the albatross and including the fulmar. Shearwaters are found on unfrozen saltwaters all...

corona, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)corona, luminous envelope surrounding the sun, outside the chromosphere. Its density is less than one billionth that of the earth's atmosphere. The corona is visible only at the time of totality durin...