Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Jamal, Ahmad

(Encyclopedia)Jamal, Ahmad, 1930–, American jazz pianist, b. Pittsburgh, Pa. He started playing the piano at the age of three and became interested in jazz during the bop era. He began playing professionally at 1...

Molnár, Ferenc

(Encyclopedia)Molnár, Ferenc fĕˈrĕnts môlˈnär [key], 1878–1952, Hungarian dramatist and novelist. He studied law in Budapest and Geneva and was for some time a journalist in Budapest. He was a prolific aut...

Nordhaus, William Dabney

(Encyclopedia)Nordhaus, William Dabney, 1941–, American economist, b. Albuquerque, N.Mex., Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1967. A professor at Yale since 1967, he has focused on the economic effects...

Neer, Aert van der

(Encyclopedia)Neer, Aert van der ärt vän dĕr nār [key], c.1603–77, Dutch landscape painter. Working mostly in Amsterdam, he excelled in painting unusual light effects, such as moonlight, sunsets, conflagratio...

Levine, Jack

(Encyclopedia)Levine, Jack ləvīnˈ [key], 1915–2010, American painter, b. Boston. Levine began his career with the Federal Arts Project. His savagely realistic paintings, executed with diffused, prismatic textu...

McLuhan, Marshall

(Encyclopedia)McLuhan, Marshall (Herbert Marshall McLuhan), 1911–80, Canadian communications theorist and educator, b. Edmonton, Alta. He taught at the Univ. of Toronto (1946–80) and at other institutions of hi...

Mirrlees, Sir James Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Mirrlees, Sir James Alexander, 1936–2018, Scottish economist, Ph.D. He taught at Cambridge (1963–69, 1995–2003), Oxford (1969–95), and Chinese University of Hong Kong (2002–18). Building on ...

Vulcan, in astronomy

(Encyclopedia)Vulcan, in astronomy, hypothetical planet whose existence was proposed by Le Verrier to explain part of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury, not all of which could be accounted for by gravitation...

Brill

(Encyclopedia)Brill or Bril, Flemish painters, brothers. Mattys Brill mäˈtīs [key], 1550–83, went to Rome early in his career and executed frescoes for Gregory XIII in the Vatican. Paul Brill, 1554–1626, pro...

brocade

(Encyclopedia)brocade brōkādˈ [key], fabric, originally silk, generally reputed to have been developed to a high state of perfection in the 16th and 17th cent. in France, Italy, and Spain. In China the weaving o...

Browse by Subject