Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Constable, John

(Encyclopedia)Constable, John, 1776–1837, English painter, b. Suffolk. Constable and Turner were the leading figures in English landscape painting of the 19th cent. Constable became famous for his landscapes of S...

biology

(Encyclopedia)biology, the science that deals with living things. It is broadly divided into zoology, the study of animal life, and botany, the study of plant life. Subdivisions of each of these sciences include cy...

bleaching

(Encyclopedia)bleaching, process of whitening by chemicals or by exposure to sun and air, commonly applied to textiles, paper pulp, wheat flour, petroleum products, oils and fats, straw, hair, feathers, and wood. C...

Turner, Joseph Mallord William

(Encyclopedia)Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 1775–1851, English landscape painter, b. London. Turner was the foremost English romantic painter and the most original of English landscape artists; in watercolor he...

Hesdin, Jacquemart de

(Encyclopedia)Hesdin, Jacquemart de zhäkmärˈ də ādăNˈ [key], fl. c.1384–1411, Franco-Flemish manuscript illuminator. Jacquemart illustrated numerous books of hours, including a number of manuscripts for Je...

Hurok, Sol

(Encyclopedia)Hurok, Sol hyo͝orˈŏk, yo͝orˈ– [key], 1888–1974, American impresario, b. Russia. Emigrating to the United States in 1906, Hurok was a peddler, streetcar conductor, bottlewasher, and hardware s...

Cram, Donald James

(Encyclopedia)Cram, Donald James, 1919–2001, American chemist, b. Chester, Vt., Ph.D. Harvard, 1947. A professor at the Univ. of California at Los Angeles, Cram expanded on the work of Charles J. Pedersen by synt...

Dacko, David

(Encyclopedia)Dacko, David dävēdˈ däkōˈ [key], 1930–2003, president of the Central African Republic (1960–66, 1979–81). A leader in the independence movement in French Equatorial Africa, he became the f...

essence

(Encyclopedia)essence, in philosophy, the nature of a thing. Aristotle maintained that there is a distinction between the form of a thing—its intelligible, verbally formulable character—and the essence of a thi...

Smith College

(Encyclopedia)Smith College, at Northampton, Mass.; undergraduate for women, graduate coeducational; chartered 1871, opened 1875 through a bequest of Sophia Smith. The first president, Laurenus Clark Seelye, was in...