Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Ono no Komachi

(Encyclopedia)Ono no Komachi ōˈnō nō kōˈmäˈchē [key], fl. c.833–857, Japanese poet. She was celebrated for her beauty and erotically charged poetry. Ranked among the most prominent poets of her day, Ono ...

Moseley, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys

(Encyclopedia)Moseley, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys mōzˈlē [key], 1887–1915, English physicist, grad. Trinity College, Oxford, 1910. He began his research under Ernest Rutherford while serving as lecturer at the Univ. ...

chorale

(Encyclopedia)chorale kōrălˈ, –rälˈ [key], any of the traditional hymns of the German Protestant Church. The form was developed after the Reformation to replace the plainsong of the earlier service and as a ...

ocher

(Encyclopedia)ocher ōˈkər [key], mixture of varying proportions of iron oxide and clay, used as a pigment. It occurs naturally as yellow ocher (yellow or yellow-brown in color), the iron oxide being limonite, or...

Vitruvius

(Encyclopedia)Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) vĭtro͞oˈvēəs [key], fl. late 1st cent. b.c. and early 1st cent. a.d., Roman writer, engineer, and architect for the Emperor Augustus. In his one extant work, D...

carbohydrate

(Encyclopedia)carbohydrate, any member of a large class of chemical compounds that includes sugars, starches, cellulose, and related compounds. These compounds are produced naturally by green plants from carbon dio...

Flammarion, Camille

(Encyclopedia)Flammarion, Camille kämēˈyə flämäryôNˈ [key], 1842–1925, French astronomer and author. He served for some years at the Paris Observatory and the Bureau of Longitudes, and in 1883 he set up a...

diverticulosis

(Encyclopedia)diverticulosis, a disorder characterized by the presence of diverticula, which are small, usually multiple saclike protrusions through the wall of the colon (large intestine). Diverticula usually do n...

Sprague, Frank Julian

(Encyclopedia)Sprague, Frank Julian sprāg [key], 1857–1934, American electrical engineer, b. Milford, Conn., grad. Annapolis, 1878. He was an assistant to Thomas Edison in 1883 and independently created a superi...

mammography

(Encyclopedia)mammography, diagnostic procedure that uses low-dose X rays to detect abnormalities in the breasts. Tomosynthesis, also known as 3D mammography, is form of mammography that combines X-ray images taken...