Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Tillman, Benjamin Ryan

(Encyclopedia)Tillman, Benjamin Ryan, 1847–1918, U.S. Senator from South Carolina (1895–1918), b. Edgefield co., S.C. A farmer, he became the leader of the backcountry whites in South Carolina and fostered thei...

Kitchen Cabinet

(Encyclopedia)Kitchen Cabinet, in U.S. history, popular name for the group of intimate, unofficial advisers of President Jackson. Early in his administration Jackson abandoned official cabinet meetings and used hea...

calculus of variations

(Encyclopedia)calculus of variations, branch of mathematics concerned with finding maximum or minimum conditions for a relationship between two or more variables that depends not only on the variables themselves, a...

Brunelleschi, Filippo

(Encyclopedia)Brunelleschi, Filippo fēlēpˈpō bro͞onĕl-lĕsˈkē [key], 1377–1446, first great architect of the Italian Renaissance, a Florentine by birth. Trained as sculptor and goldsmith, he designed a tr...

Soyer

(Encyclopedia)Soyer, three brothers, American painters, emigrated with their family from Russia in 1912. Two were twins, Raphael Soyer, 1899–1987, and Moses Soyer, 1899–1974, b. Borisoglebsk. They settled in Ne...

robot

(Encyclopedia)robot or automaton ôtämˈətänˌ [key] mechanical device designed to perform the work generally done by a human being. The Czech dramatist Karel Čapek popularized the expression [Czech,=compulsory...

Rulers of the Byzantine Empire (table)

(Encyclopedia)Rulers of the Byzantine Empire ...

Albee, Edward

(Encyclopedia)Albee, Edward ălˈbē [key], 1928–2016, American playwright, one of the leading dramatists of his generation, b. Washington, D.C., as Edward Harvey. His most characteristic work constitutes an absu...

Great Zimbabwe

(Encyclopedia)Great Zimbabwe zĭmbäbˈwā [key] [Bantu,=stone houses], ruined city, SE Zimbabwe, near Masvingo (formerly Fort Victoria). Its mortarless, curving granite walls and buildings were constructed in 11th...

pitta

(Encyclopedia)pitta pĭtˈə [key], name used to refer to a genus (Pitta) of small, plump, brightly colored birds. The genus, including some twenty-three species, constitutes the whole of the family Pittidae. Known...