Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

234 results found

Álvarez, Juan

(Encyclopedia)Álvarez, Juan hwän älˈvärās [key], 1780–1867, Mexican general of indigenous descent, president of Mexico (1855). He distinguished himself in battle under Morelos y Pavón and was later the fir...

Kovalevsky, Sonya

(Encyclopedia)Kovalevsky, Sonya or Sophie kōˌvəlĕfˈskē [key], 1850–91, Russian mathematician. She studied at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin (under K. T. Weierstrass) and in 1874 received a Ph.D. ...

altruism

(Encyclopedia)altruism ălˈtro͞oĭzˈəm [key], concept in philosophy and psychology that holds that the interests of others, rather than of the self, can motivate an individual. The term was invented in the 19th...

Howe, Elias

(Encyclopedia)Howe, Elias, 1819–67, American inventor, b. Spencer, Mass. He was apprenticed in 1838 to an instrument maker and watchmaker in Boston at whose suggestion he turned his attention to devising a sewing...

Frank, Leonhard

(Encyclopedia)Frank, Leonhard lāˈônhärt frängk [key], 1882–1961, German expressionist writer. He gained acclaim with his first novel, The Robber Band (1914, tr. 1928), and it was followed by such works as Th...

Moses, Grandma

(Encyclopedia)Moses, Grandma (Anna Mary Robertson Moses), 1860–1961, American painter, b. Washington co., N.Y., self-taught. She lived the arduous life of a farm wife, first in the Shenandoah Valley and later at ...

Kerr, Judith

(Encyclopedia)Kerr, Judith (Anna Judith Gertrud Helene Kerr), 1923–2019, English children's book author and illustrator, b. Berlin. Her first and most well-known book, The Tiger Who Came to Tea (1968), tells of a...

Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer, British statesman, soldier, and author

(Encyclopedia)Churchill, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer, 1874–1965, British statesman, soldier, and author; son of Lord Randolph Churchill. Churchill was undoubtedly one of the greatest public figures of the 20t...

Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich

(Encyclopedia)Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich nyĭkəlīˈ styĭpäˈnəvĭch go͞omēlyôfˈ [key], 1886–1921, Russian poet. With his wife, the poet Anna Akhmatova, and Gorodetsky Gumilev, he founded the Acmeist sc...

March, Fredric

(Encyclopedia)March, Fredric, 1897–1975, American actor, b. Racine, Wis., as Frederick McIntyre Bickel. Equally distinguished on stage and screen, he won Academy Awards for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932) and The ...