Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Willard, Emma

(Encyclopedia)Willard, Emma, 1787–1870, American educator, pioneer in woman's education, b. Emma Hart in Berlin, Conn. She attended and later taught in the local academy and in 1807 took charge of the Female Acad...

Thomas, Helen Amelia

(Encyclopedia)Thomas, Helen Amelia, 1920–2013, American journalist, b. Winchester, Ky., grad Wayne State Univ. (B.A., 1942). The daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she was a pioneering woman journalist in an era do...

European Council

(Encyclopedia)European Council, institution of the European Union (EU) responsible for defining the EU's general political direction and priorities. It is composed of an elected president (who serves a two-and-a-ha...

Eve, in genetics

(Encyclopedia)Eve, in genetics, popular term for a theoretical female ancestor of all living people, also known as Mitochondrial Eve. In 1987 biochemist Allan C. Wilson proposed that all living human beings had inh...

premenstrual syndrome

(Encyclopedia)premenstrual syndrome (PMS), any of various symptoms experienced by women of childbearing age in the days immediately preceding menstruation. It is most common in women in their twenties and thirties....

Hanaford, Phoebe Ann (Coffin)

(Encyclopedia)Hanaford, Phoebe Ann (Coffin) hănˈəfərd [key], 1829–1921, American Universalist minister. She was the first woman ordained (1868) in New England. Hanaford was the author of fiction, history, and...

Gray, Hanna Holborn

(Encyclopedia)Gray, Hanna Holborn, 1930–, American historian, president of the Univ. of Chicago (1978–93), b. Germany. Her father, the eminent historian Hajo Holborn, fled the Nazis in 1934 and settled in the U...

Tereshkova, Valentina Vladimirovna

(Encyclopedia)Tereshkova, Valentina Vladimirovna, 1937–, Soviet cosmonaut. She was the first woman to orbit the earth, in Vostok 6 on June 16–19, 1963. She left the Soviet space program soon after and married c...

Rodoreda, Mercè

(Encyclopedia)Rodoreda, Mercè, 1909–83, Spanish novelist writing in Catalan. Exiled for several decades in Paris and Geneva following the Spanish Civil War, Rodoreda focuses her novel Time of the Doves (1962, tr...

Abe, Kobo

(Encyclopedia)Abe, Kobo kōˈbō äˈbā [key], pseud. of Kimifusa Abe, 1924–93, Japanese novelist and dramatist. Although Abe trained as a doctor, he never practiced medi...