Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

207 results found

Poinsett, Joel Roberts

(Encyclopedia)Poinsett, Joel Roberts poinˈsĕt [key], 1779–1851, American diplomat and politician, b. Charleston, S.C. In 1810 he was sent as a special commissioner to South America to investigate political cond...

Roberts, Benjamin Titus

(Encyclopedia)Roberts, Benjamin Titus, 1823–93, American clergyman, one of the founders of the Free Methodist Church, b. Gowanda, N.Y. In 1858 he was expelled from the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopa...

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox

(Encyclopedia)Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 1886–1941, American poet and novelist, b. Perryville, Ky., grad. Univ. of Chicago, 1921. She is best known for her novels and stories of the Kentucky mountain people, whose...

Roberts, Kenneth Lewis

(Encyclopedia)Roberts, Kenneth Lewis, 1885–1957, American author, b. Kennebunk, Maine, grad. Cornell, 1908. Well known as staff correspondent for the Saturday Evening Post and as an author of travel books, Robert...

Roberts, Lawrence Gilman

(Encyclopedia)Roberts, Lawrence Gilman, 1937–2018, American computer scientist, b. Westport, Conn., Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1963. He worked at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, a government research ...

Roberts, Owen Josephus

(Encyclopedia)Roberts, Owen Josephus, 1875–1955, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1930–45), b. Philadelphia. After receiving (1898) his law degree from the Univ. of Pennsylvania, he practiced law in...

Roberts, Richard John

(Encyclopedia)Roberts, Richard John, 1943–, British biochemist, Ph.D., Univ. of Sheffield, 1968. Roberts joined James D. Watson's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York in 1972, becoming assistant director for...

Rinehart, Mary Roberts

(Encyclopedia)Rinehart, Mary Roberts rīnˈhärt [key], 1876–1958, American novelist, b. Pittsburgh. A graduate nurse, she married Dr. Stanley M. Rinehart in 1896. The first of her many mystery stories, The Circu...

Curtis, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar

(Encyclopedia)Curtis, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar, 1850–1933, American publisher and philanthropist, b. Portland, Maine. He started his first periodical, The People's Ledger, in Boston in 1872. Later, in Philadelphi...

Iran hostage crisis

(Encyclopedia)Iran hostage crisis, in U.S. history, events following the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran by Iranian students on Nov. 4, 1979. The overthrow of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran by an Isla...