Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

McLuhan, Marshall

(Encyclopedia)McLuhan, Marshall (Herbert Marshall McLuhan), 1911–80, Canadian communications theorist and educator, b. Edmonton, Alta. He taught at the Univ. of Toronto (1946–80) and at other institutions of hi...

Rosso, Medardo

(Encyclopedia)Rosso, Medardo rôsˈsō [key], 1858–1928, Italian sculptor. A painter until 1883, he turned to sculpture and worked periodically in Paris but lived mainly in Milan. He was a friend of Degas and Ro...

Beccafumi, Domenico di Pace

(Encyclopedia)Beccafumi, Domenico di Pace dōmĕˈnēkō dē päˈchā bāk-käfo͞oˈmē [key], 1486–1551, Italian mannerist painter and sculptor, also called Il Meccherino. He studied painting in Siena and Rome...

Scorel, Jan van

(Encyclopedia)Scorel, Jan van yän vän skōˈrəl [key], 1495–1562, Dutch portrait and religious painter, influenced by Gossaert in Utrecht and by Dürer in Nuremberg. About 1521 he visited Palestine and later R...

shock wave

(Encyclopedia)shock wave, wave formed of a zone of extremely high pressure within a fluid, especially the atmosphere, that propagates through the fluid at a speed in excess of the speed of sound. A shock wave is ca...

Coypel

(Encyclopedia)Coypel kwäpĕlˈ [key], family of French painters. Noël Coypel, 1628–1707, director of the Académie de France à Rome and later of the Académie royale de péinture et de sculpture in Paris, was ...

Baldung, Hans

(Encyclopedia)Baldung or Baldung-Grien, Hans häns bälˈdo͝ong, –grēn [key], c.1484–1545, German painter and printmaker, active mainly at Strasbourg. He was surnamed Grien or Grün because of his fondness fo...

radiation weapon

(Encyclopedia)radiation weapon or radiological weapon, a bomb or warhead that uses conventional chemical explosives to disperse radioactive material, sometimes called a “dirty bomb.” Designed to produce radiati...

Hess, Victor Francis

(Encyclopedia)Hess, Victor Francis, 1883–1964, American physicist, b. Austria, Ph.D. Univ. of Graz, 1906. After teaching at the universities of Graz and Innsbruck, he came to the United States in 1938 and was lat...

Hooch, Pieter de

(Encyclopedia)Hooch or Hoogh, Pieter de both: pēˈtər də hōkh [key], b. c.1629, d. after 1677, Dutch genre painter. He worked in Delft, Leiden, and Amsterdam, painting intimate interiors that may have been infl...

Browse by Subject