Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Lowell, James Russell

(Encyclopedia)Lowell, James Russell, 1819–91, American poet, critic, and editor, b. Cambridge, Mass. He was influential in revitalizing the intellectual life of New England in the mid-19th cent. Educated at Harva...

White, Patrick

(Encyclopedia)White, Patrick, 1912–90, Australian novelist, b. London. Raised in England and educated at Cambridge, he returned to Australia after World War II, earning his living by farming and writing. His nove...

Moerner, W. E.

(Encyclopedia)Moerner, W. E. (William Esco Moerner), 1953–, American physical chemist, b. Pleasanton, Calif., Ph.D. Cornell, 1982. Moerner worked at the IBM Almaden Research Center from 1981 to 1995 and at the Un...

Wertmüller, Lina

(Encyclopedia)Wertmüller, Lina, 1928–2021, Italian film director, b. Archangela as Felice Assunta Wertmüller von Elgg Spañol von Braucich. In the 1970s she becam...

Gombrich, E. H.

(Encyclopedia)Gombrich, E. H. (Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich), 1909–2001, British art historian and scholar, b. Vienna, grad. Univ. of Vienna (1933). From a culturally prominent Austrian-Jewish family, he fled German...

White, Charles

(Encyclopedia)White, Charles (Charles Wilbert White, Jr.), 1918–79, American figurative painter, printmaker, and teacher, b. Chicago, studied School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A left-leaning activist whose ...

Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921

(Encyclopedia)TulsThunberga race massacre, Greenwood, Okla., May 31 to June 1, 1921. On the evening of May 31, 1921, a white lynch mob gathered outside the ...

Genet, Jean

(Encyclopedia)Genet, Jean zhənāˈ [key], 1910–86, French dramatist. Deserted by his parents as an infant, Genet spent much of his early life in reformatories and prisons. Between 1940 and 1948 he wrote several...

Lee, Harper

(Encyclopedia)Lee, Harper (Nelle Harper Lee), 1926–2016, American novelist, b. Monroeville, Ala. A member of an old Southern family and related to Robert E. Lee, she was a lifelong friend of Truman Capote. Lee at...

sharecropping

(Encyclopedia)sharecropping, an agricultural system in which a landowner allows a tenant to use their land in return for a share of the crop produced. In the United S...
 

Browse by Subject