Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Antinoüs

(Encyclopedia)Antinoüs ăntĭnˈōəs [key], c.110–130, favorite of Emperor Hadrian, b. Bithynia. He was with the emperor constantly until on a journey in Egypt he was drowned in the Nile—some say in saving Ha...

glass snake

(Encyclopedia)glass snake, common name for the snakelike legless lizards of the genus Ophisaurus found in the S and central United States and in Eurasia. The shiny, scaled body is gray or greenish brown, sometimes ...

Senior, Nassau

(Encyclopedia)Senior, Nassau, 1790–1864, English economist. A graduate of Oxford, he was called there in 1825 to fill the first chair of political economy in England. In An Outline of the Science of Political Eco...

Brunel, Sir Marc Isambard

(Encyclopedia)Brunel, Sir Marc Isambard ĭzˈəmbärdˌ bro͞onĕlˈ [key], 1769–1849, British engineer and inventor. Born in France, he came to the United States in 1793 as a royalist refugee. He became chief en...

capital levy

(Encyclopedia)capital levy, form of taxation by which the government takes part of the capital of any person or business, as distinguished from a tax on personal or business income. It is usually applied to all cap...

Robertson, Sir Dennis

(Encyclopedia)Robertson, Sir Dennis, 1890–1963, British economist, grad. Trinity College, Cambridge. A professor at Cambridge (1944–57), he also handled Anglo-American financial relationships during World War I...

Iphigenia

(Encyclopedia)Iphigenia ĭfˌəjənīˈə [key], in Greek legend, daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. When the Greek ships were delayed by contrary winds at Aulis en route to the Trojan War, Calchas informed Ag...

Lockyer, Sir Joseph Norman

(Encyclopedia)Lockyer, Sir Joseph Norman lŏkˈyər [key], 1836–1920, English astronomer, educated on the Continent. One of the first to make a spectroscopic examination of the sun and stars, he devised (1868), i...

Amano, Hiroshi

(Encyclopedia)Amano, Hiroshi, 1960–, Japanese physicist, Ph.D. Nagoya Univ., Japan, 1989. He is a professor at Nagoya Univ. in Japan. Amano is the joint recipient with Shuji Nakamura and Isamu Akasaki of the 2014...

Goodenough, John Bannister

(Encyclopedia)Goodenough, John Bannister, 1922–2023, American physicist, b. Jena, Germany, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1952. Goodenough was a researcher at the Massachu...