Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Hickok, Wild Bill

(Encyclopedia)Hickok, Wild Bill, 1837–76, American frontier marshal, b. Troy Grove, near Ottawa, Ill., as James Butler Hickok. He took part in the Kansas struggle preceding the Civil War, was a driver of the Butt...

Bedford, Sybille

(Encyclopedia)Bedford, Sybille, 1911–2006, English writer, b. Charlottenberg, Germany, as Sybille von Schoenebeck. She worked as a legal reporter for various publications, covering more than 100 trials including ...

Getz, Stan

(Encyclopedia)Getz, Stan, 1927–91, American jazz tenor saxophonist, b. Philadelphia, as Stanley Gayetsky. As a mature musician he was especially known for his “cool” jazz style. He began playing as a teenager...

Alferov, Zhores Ivanovich

(Encyclopedia)Alferov, Zhores Ivanovich, 1930–2019, Russian physicist, b. Vitebsk (now in Belarus), Ph.D. V. I. Ulyanov Electrotechnical Institute, 1952. He joined the research staff of the A. F. Ioffe Physico-Te...

O'Neill of the Maine, Terence Marne O'Neill, Baron

(Encyclopedia)O'Neill of the Maine, Terence Marne O'Neill, Baron, 1914–90, Ulster Unionist politician. A member of one of the oldest Protestant families in Ireland, he entered the Northern Ireland Parliament in 1...

translation

(Encyclopedia)translation [Lat.,=carrying across], the rendering of a text into another language. Applied to literature, the term connotes the art of recomposing a work in another language without losing its origin...

MacInnes, Colin

(Encyclopedia)MacInnes, Colin məkĭnˈəs [key], 1914–76, English novelist, b. London. Son of the novelist Angela Thirkell, MacInnes was educated in Australia and served in the British intelligence corps during ...

Greider, Carol Widney

(Encyclopedia)Greider, Carol Widney, 1961–, American molecular biologist, b. San Diego, Calif., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1987. Greider was a researcher and professor at the Cold Spring Harbor Laborato...

George, Saint

(Encyclopedia)George, Saint, 4th cent.?, perhaps a soldier in the imperial army who died for the faith in Asia Minor. His life is cloaked in legends; Gibbon's identification of him with George of Cappadocia is fals...

jay

(Encyclopedia)jay, common name for a number of birds of the family Corvidae (crows and jays), found in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The best-known representatives in America are the blue jay, Cyanocitta cristata...