Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Huxley, Thomas Henry

(Encyclopedia)Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825–95, English biologist and educator, grad. Charing Cross Hospital, 1845. Huxley gave up his own biological research to become an influential scientific publicist and was th...

Gorgas, William Crawford

(Encyclopedia)Gorgas, William Crawford, 1854–1920, American disease and sanitation expert, surgeon general of the United States, b. Mobile, Ala., grad. Bellevue Hospital Medical College, 1879. He served with the ...

Murray, Elizabeth

(Encyclopedia)Murray, Elizabeth, 1940–2007, American abstract artist, b. Chicago. She moved in 1967 to New York, where she became part of the post-minimalism generation of artists in the 1970s. In the late 1960s,...

macular degeneration

(Encyclopedia)macular degeneration, eye disorder causing loss of central vision. The affected area, the macula, lies at the back of the retina and is the part that produces the sharpest vision. The most serious vis...

Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner

(Encyclopedia)Maine, Sir Henry James Sumner, 1822–88, English jurist and historian, educated at Cambridge. A pioneer in the historical and comparative study of institutions, he viewed the history of laws as the m...

Sorel, Georges

(Encyclopedia)Sorel, Georges sôrĕlˈ [key], 1847–1922, French social philosopher. An engineer before he devoted himself to writing, Sorel found in the political and social life of bourgeois democracy the trium...

muckrakers

(Encyclopedia)muckrakers, name applied to American journalists, novelists, and critics who in the first decade of the 20th cent. attempted to expose the abuses of business and the corruption in politics. The term d...

Abe, Nobuyuki

(Encyclopedia)Abe, Nobuyuki, 1875–1953, Japanese army officer and political, b. Kanazawa, Ishikawa prefecture. He attended the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and the Army War College, then serve...

Kalisz

(Encyclopedia)Kalisz käˈlēsh [key], Ger. Kalisch, city (1993 est. pop. 106,600), Wielkopolskie prov., central Poland. An industrial center, it has factories producing textiles, clothing, chemicals, aircraft comp...

Brancovan, Constantine

(Encyclopedia)Brancovan, Constantine brän-kōvänˈ [key], 1654–1714, prince of Walachia (1688–1714). A skillful politician who secured domestic peace, he furthered Walachia's economic and cultural development...