Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Whitman, Charles Otis

(Encyclopedia)Whitman, Charles Otis, 1842–1910, American zoologist, b. Woodstock, Maine, grad. Bowdoin, 1868, Ph.D. Univ. of Leipzig, 1878. From 1892 he was professor of zoology at the Univ. of Chicago. He founde...

Canfield, Richard Albert

(Encyclopedia)Canfield, Richard Albert, 1855–1914, American gambler, b. New Bedford, Mass. A well-known gambling operator in Providence, R.I., Canfield went in the 1880s to New York, where his gambling establishm...

electron

(Encyclopedia)electron, elementary particle carrying a unit charge of negative electricity. Ordinary electric current is the flow of electrons through a wire conductor (see electricity). The electron is one of the ...

black hole

(Encyclopedia)black hole, in astronomy, celestial object of such extremely intense gravity that it attracts everything near it and in some instances prevents everything, including light, from escaping. The term was...

Leominster

(Encyclopedia)Leominster lĕmˈĭnstər [key], city (1990 pop. 38,145), Worcester co., N central Mass.; set off from Lancaster 1740, inc. as a city 1915. Plastics, fabricated metals, locks, processed foods, and che...

Lowell, John, American jurist

(Encyclopedia)Lowell, John, 1743–1802, American jurist, b. Newburyport, Mass. He became (1762) a lawyer and later served in the provincial assembly (1776, 1778), in the state constitutional convention (1779–80)...

module

(Encyclopedia)module. 1 Term derived from the Latin modulus, a unit of measure in classical architecture equal to half the diameter of a column at its base. This unit was used in proportioning the classical orders ...

asperges

(Encyclopedia)asperges əspûrˈjəs [key], ceremonial sprinkling of the people with holy water by the priest before the Sunday High Mass in the Roman Catholic Church. The accompanying antiphon begins, Asperges me,...

Ruggles, Carl

(Encyclopedia)Ruggles, Carl, 1876–1971, American composer, b. Marion, Mass. Ruggles studied music at Harvard and was a friend of Charles Ives. His works are highly original, characterized by complex textures and ...

Todd, Mabel Loomis

(Encyclopedia)Todd, Mabel Loomis, 1858–1932, American author, b. Cambridge, Mass. A friend of Emily Dickinson, she edited and deciphered much of the Dickinson material in Poems (with T. W. Higginson, Ser. 1 and S...