Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Kerensky, Aleksandr Feodorovich

(Encyclopedia)Kerensky, Aleksandr Feodorovich kərĕnˈskē, Rus. əlyĭksänˈdər fyôˈdərəvĭch kâˈrĭnskē [key], 1881–1970, Russian revolutionary. A lawyer, he was elected to the fourth duma in 1912 as ...

Hammurabi

(Encyclopedia)Hammurabi hämo͝oräˈbē [key], fl. 1792–1750 b.c., king of Babylonia. He founded an empire that was eventually destroyed by raids from Asia Minor. Hammurabi may have begun building the tower of B...

Golding, Bruce

(Encyclopedia)Golding, Bruce, 1947–, Jamaican political leader. The son of Tacius Golding, a member of parliament and speaker of the house in the 1960s, he is a graduate of the Univ. of the West Indies (B.Sc., 19...

Galle

(Encyclopedia)Galle gäl [key], city (1995 est. pop. 87,000), capital of Southern prov., extreme S Sri Lanka, on the Indian Ocean. An agricultural market center, it exports tea, rubber, coconut oil, cloves, and oth...

Sata, Michael Chilufya

(Encyclopedia)Sata, Michael Chilufya, 1937–2014, Zambian politician. Sata was a policeman, railway worker, and trade unionist before entering politics in 1963, and was later (1985) elected governor of Lusaka prov...

Sadi

(Encyclopedia)Sadi or Saadi both: säˈdē [key], Persian poet, 1184–1291. b. Shiraz. Orphaned at an early age, Sadi studied in Baghdad, where he met Suhrawardi, a major Sufi figure. Having to flee Baghdad becaus...

Samuelsson, Bengt Ingemar

(Encyclopedia)Samuelsson, Bengt Ingemar, 1934–, Swedish biochemist, grad. Karolinska Institute (Ph.D. 1960, M.D. 1961). He was a professor at the Karolinska Institute from 1962 to 1966 and again from 1973; from 1...

Theremin, Leon

(Encyclopedia)Theremin, Leon thĕrˈəmən [key], 1896–1993, Russian engineer and inventor, b. St. Petersburg as Lev Sergeyevich Termen. He studied and worked in his native city, attending its university and cons...

Pullman strike

(Encyclopedia)Pullman strike, in U.S. history, an important labor dispute. On May 11, 1894, workers of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago struck to protest wage cuts and the firing of union representatives. ...

Nečas, Petr

(Encyclopedia)Nečas, Petr pĕtˈər nĕˈchäs [key], 1964–, Czech politician. Trained as a physicist, he graduated (1988) from Brno's Uherske Science Univ. and taught (1983–88) at Masaryk Univ., Brno. After w...