Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

game laws

(Encyclopedia)game laws, restrictions on the hunting or capture of wild game, whether bird, beast, or fish. After the Norman Conquest (1066), England enacted stringent game laws, known as the Forest Laws, which mad...

Hincks, Sir Francis

(Encyclopedia)Hincks, Sir Francis, 1807–85, Canadian journalist and statesman, b. Ireland. Settling (1832) in York (now Toronto), he was soon drawn into the Reform party. In 1839 he became editor of the Toronto E...

Grünberg, Peter Andreas

(Encyclopedia)Grünberg, Peter Andreas pāˈtər ändrāˈäs grünbĕrkˈ [key], 1939–2018 German physicist, b. Pilsen, Germany (now Plzeň, Czech Republic). After receiving his Ph.D. at the Darmstadt Univ. of T...

Hall, Jeffrey Connor

(Encyclopedia)Hall, Jeffrey Connor, 1945–, American geneticist, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., Ph.D. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, 1971. Hall was a professor at Brandeis Univ. from 1974 to 2008; he also taught (2004–12) at...

statin

(Encyclopedia)statin, any of a class of drugs that reduces the amount of cholesterol in the blood by interfering with the production of cholesterol in the liver; commonly prescribed statins include atorvastatin, lo...

stereoscope

(Encyclopedia)stereoscope stĕrˈēəskōpˌ [key], optical instrument that presents to a viewer two slightly differing pictures, one to each eye, to give the effect of depth. In normal vision the two eyes, being a...

Perón, Eva Duarte de

(Encyclopedia)Perón, Eva Duarte de āˈvä do͞oärˈtā ᵺā pĕrōnˈ [key], 1919–52, Argentine political leader. The second wife of Juan Perón, whom she married in 1945, she virtually co-governed the countr...

plateresque

(Encyclopedia)plateresque plătərĕskˈ [key] [Span.,=silversmith], earliest phase of Spanish Renaissance architecture and decoration, in the early 16th cent. Its richness of effect was primarily based upon the wo...

Black English

(Encyclopedia)Black English, distinctive dialect spoken at times by as many as 80% to 90% of African Americans; also called ebonics [from ebony and phonics]. Long considered merely substandard English, it is in fac...

morphine

(Encyclopedia)morphine, principal derivative of opium, which is the juice in the unripe seed pods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum. It was first isolated from opium in 1803 by the German pharmacist F. W. A. S...