Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Reeve, Clara

(Encyclopedia)Reeve, Clara rēv [key], 1729–1807, English novelist. Her most famous work, The Champion of Virtue: A Gothic Story (1777), was written in imitation of Walpole's Castle of Otranto. After the first ed...

Astor, William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount

(Encyclopedia)Astor, William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount, 1848–1919, American-British financier, b. New York City, educated in Germany and in Italy and at the Columbia law school; son of John Jacob Astor (1822–...

Dunning, John, 1st Baron Ashburton

(Encyclopedia)Dunning, John, 1st Baron Ashburton, 1731–83, English jurist and politician. He attracted notice in 1762 by his written defense of the British East India Company merchants against their Dutch rivals....

Erskine, Thomas, 1st Baron Erskine

(Encyclopedia)Erskine, Thomas, 1st Baron Erskine, 1750–1823, British jurist, b. Edinburgh. He was admitted to the bar in 1778. His eloquence and forensic skill won Erskine an enormous practice, during which he ma...

Forrest, John Forrest, 1st Baron

(Encyclopedia)Forrest, John Forrest, 1st Baron, 1847–1918, Australian explorer and statesman. In 1869 he led an expedition to the west of Lake Barlee in search of the missing Friedrich Leichhardt, and the followi...

Ellenborough, Edward Law, 1st Baron

(Encyclopedia)Ellenborough, Edward Law, 1st Baron, 1750–1818, British jurist and statesman. He achieved fame through his successful defense of Warren Hastings in the impeachment trial (1788–95), but his princip...

North, Frederick North, 8th Baron

(Encyclopedia)North, Frederick North, 8th Baron, 1732–92, British statesman, best known as Lord North. He entered Parliament in 1754 and became a junior lord of the treasury (1759), privy councilor (1766), and ch...

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1st Baron

(Encyclopedia)Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 1st Baron, 1800–1859, English historian and author, b. Leicestershire, educated at Cambridge. After the success of his essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review (Aug., 1825...

Kelvin, William Thomson, 1st Baron

(Encyclopedia)Kelvin, William Thomson, 1st Baron, 1824–1907, British mathematician and physicist, b. Belfast. He was professor of natural philosophy at the Univ. of Glasgow (1846–99). He is known especially for...

Lister, Joseph Lister, 1st Baron

(Encyclopedia)Lister, Joseph Lister, 1st Baron, 1827–1912, English surgeon, educated at University College, London. He brought to surgery the principle of antisepsis, an outgrowth of Pasteur's theory that bacteri...