Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

slipped disc

(Encyclopedia)slipped disc, rupture or herniation of an intervertebral disc. These discs separate and cushion the vertebrae, the segments of the spinal column. They are composed of an outer rim of fibrous connectiv...

Stoddart, James Fraser

(Encyclopedia)Stoddart, James Fraser, 1942–, British chemist, Ph.D. Univ. of Edinburgh, 1966. He began his career at Sheffield Univ., England, in 1970, then moved to Birmingham Univ., England, in 1990, the Univ. ...

chain reaction

(Encyclopedia)CE5 Chain reaction: A neutron (n) strikes the uranium nucleus (U-235), causing it to split into fission products A and B and release two neutrons. These neutrons can in turn cause further fissions....

Crumb, George Henry

(Encyclopedia)Crumb, George Henry, 1929–, American composer, b. Charleston, W.Va., grad. Mason College of Music, Charleston (B.A. 1950); Univ. of Illinois (M.A. 1953); Univ. of Michigan (D.M.A. 1959). In his comp...

home rule, municipal

(Encyclopedia)home rule, municipal, system adopted in many states of the United States by which a city is given the right to draft and amend its own charter and to regulate purely local matters without interference...

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, American author and physician

(Encyclopedia)Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809–94, American author and physician, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard (B.A., 1829; M.D., 1836); father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. He began his medical career as a gen...

Anderson, Maxwell

(Encyclopedia)Anderson, Maxwell, 1888–1959, American dramatist, b. Atlantic, Pa., grad. Univ. of North Dakota, 1911. His plays, many of which are written in verse, usually concern social and moral problems. Ander...

Gower, John

(Encyclopedia)Gower, John gouˈər, gôr [key], 1330?–1408, English poet. He was the best-known contemporary and friend of Chaucer, who addressed him as “Moral Gower,” at the end of Troilus and Criseyde. Appa...

Gissing, George

(Encyclopedia)Gissing, George gĭsˈĭng [key], 1857–1903, English novelist. His promising future as a scholar was curtailed by his expulsion from Owens College (later the Univ. of Manchester) because of his asso...

Ligeti, György

(Encyclopedia)Ligeti, György, 1923–2006, Hungarian composer. He studied music in Romania and Hungary, and was a teacher at the Budapest Academy of Music until he fled to Vienna (1956) after the Soviet invasion o...