Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

483 results found

Bradstreet, Anne (Dudley)

(Encyclopedia)Bradstreet, Anne (Dudley), c.1612–1672, early American poet, b. Northampton, England, considered the first significant woman author in the American colonies. She came to Massachusetts in the Winthro...

Shull, Clifford

(Encyclopedia)Shull, Clifford, 1915–2001, American physicist, b. Pittsburgh, Pa. Educated at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and New York Univ. (Ph.D., 1941), Shull was on the st...

Purcell, Edward Mills

(Encyclopedia)Purcell, Edward Mills, 1912–97, American physicist, b. Taylorville, Ill., Ph.D. Harvard, 1938. During World War II, Purcell was a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation La...

Richards, Ellen Henrietta Swallow

(Encyclopedia)Richards, Ellen Henrietta Swallow, 1842–1911, American chemist, educator, and organizer of the home economics movement, b. Dunstable, Mass., grad. Vassar, 1870. In 1870 she began the study of chemis...

Revere, Paul

(Encyclopedia)Revere, Paul, 1735–1818, American silversmith and political leader in the American Revolution, b. Boston. In his father's smithy he learned to work gold and silver, and he became a leading silversmi...

Plymouth Colony

(Encyclopedia)Plymouth Colony, settlement made by the Pilgrims on the coast of Massachusetts in 1620. After several years the colonists could no longer be restrained from settling on the more productive land to t...

Edgerton, Harold

(Encyclopedia)Edgerton, Harold, 1903–90, American inventor and educator, b. Fremont, Nebr. He was educated at the Univ. of Nebraska and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (D.Sc., 1931), and taught at the l...

Cornell, Eric Allin

(Encyclopedia)Cornell, Eric Allin, 1961–, American physicist, b. Palo Alto, Calif., Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1990. Since 1990, he has been a researcher at the Joint Institute for Laboratory As...

Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood

(Encyclopedia)Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood, 1816–95, American lawyer, U.S. Attorney General (1869–70), b. Concord, Mass. While serving (1846) in the Massachusetts senate, he declared that he would rather be a “Con...

Handlin, Oscar

(Encyclopedia)Handlin, Oscar, 1915–2011, American historian, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., grad. Brooklyn College (B.A., 1934). He received his Ph.D (1940) from Harvard and taught there from 1939 to 1984. Most of his work i...