Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

112 results found

Skeat, Walter William

(Encyclopedia)Skeat, Walter William, 1835–1912, English scholar and philologist. Skeat took holy orders in 1860, but illness cut short his church career. At Cambridge he served as a lecturer in mathematics (1864...

McDonald, Arthur Bruce

(Encyclopedia)McDonald, Arthur Bruce, 1943–, Canadian astrophysicist, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology, 1969. McDonald was a researcher at the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in Ottawa, Canada, from 1970...

Steinman, Ralph Marvin

(Encyclopedia)Steinman, Ralph Marvin, 1943–2011, Canadian biologist, M.D. Harvard Medical School, 1968. He was a researcher and professor at Rockefeller Univ., New York City, from 1970 until his death in 2011. St...

Kahn, Herman

(Encyclopedia)Kahn, Herman kän [key], 1922–83, American military strategist. b. Bayonne, N.J. After graduate work in physics at the California Institute of Technology, he joined the Rand Corporation. Unlike scho...

Elgin Marbles

(Encyclopedia)Elgin Marbles ĕlˈgĭn [key], ancient sculptures taken from Athens to England in 1806 by Thomas Bruce, 7th earl of Elgin; other fragments exist in several European museums. Consisting of much of the ...

Thessalonians

(Encyclopedia)Thessalonians thĕsˌəlōˈnēənz [key], two letters of the New Testament. First Thessalonians was written by St. Paul from Corinth, c.a.d. 51, and addressed to the newly founded church at Thessalon...

Stirling, town, Scotland

(Encyclopedia)Stirling, town (1991 pop. 38,638), Stirling council area, central Scotland, on the Forth River. The center of a large farm district, it has livestock markets and light industries making agricultural m...

decathlon

(Encyclopedia)decathlon dĭkăthˈlŏn [key], in modern Olympic games, a contest for men held over two days and composed of 10 track-and-field events. It consists of the long jump; the high jump; the discus throw; ...

Thugs

(Encyclopedia)Thugs thŭgz [key], former Indian religious sect of murderers and robbers, also called Phansigars [stranglers]. Membership was primarily hereditary and included both Hindus and Muslims, but all were d...

camp meeting

(Encyclopedia)camp meeting, outdoor religious meeting, usually held in the summer and lasting for several days. The camp meeting was a prominent institution of the American frontier. It originated under the preachi...
 

Browse by Subject