Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

164 results found

Davie, William Richardson

(Encyclopedia)Davie, William Richardson, 1756–1820, American Revolutionary soldier and statesman, b. Egremont, Cumberland, England. During the American Revolution he served under Casimir Pulaski and later took pa...

Grimaldi, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Grimaldi, Joseph grĭmălˈdē [key], 1779–1837, English pantomime actor and clown. He made his debut at the age of three in Robinson Crusoe at Sadler's Wells, London. For many years he performed th...

Róheim, Géza

(Encyclopedia)Róheim, Géza, 1891–1953, Hungarian anthropologist and psychoanalyst. He was educated at the universities of Leipzig, Berlin, and Budapest (Ph.D., 1914). From 1928 to 1931 he did fieldwork in centr...

maroon

(Encyclopedia)maroon, term for a fugitive slave in the 17th and 18th cent. in the West Indies and Guiana, or for a descendant of such slaves. They were called marron by the French and cimarrón by the Spanish. Form...

Fernald, Merritt Lyndon

(Encyclopedia)Fernald, Merritt Lyndon fûrˈnəld [key], 1873–1950, American botanist, b. Orono, Maine, grad. Harvard, 1897. He taught at Harvard (1902–49) and was director of the Gray Herbarium there from 1937...

Wilbur, Ray Lyman

(Encyclopedia)Wilbur, Ray Lyman, 1875–1949, American public official and educator, b. Boonesboro, Iowa, grad. Stanford (B.A., 1896; M.A., 1897) and Cooper Medical College, San Francisco, 1899. After studying medi...

Robinson, Sir John Beverley

(Encyclopedia)Robinson, Sir John Beverley, 1791–1863, Canadian jurist, b. Lower Canada (Quebec). After holding many important offices, he entered upon his long career (1829–62) as chief justice of Upper Canada;...

Selkirk, Alexander

(Encyclopedia)Selkirk, Alexander sĕlˈkərk [key], 1676–1721, Scottish sailor whose adventures suggested to Daniel Defoe the story of Robinson Crusoe (1719). In 1704, as a sailing master, Selkirk quarreled with ...

Hurok, Sol

(Encyclopedia)Hurok, Sol hyo͝orˈŏk, yo͝orˈ– [key], 1888–1974, American impresario, b. Russia. Emigrating to the United States in 1906, Hurok was a peddler, streetcar conductor, bottlewasher, and hardware s...

Ventris, Michael George Francis

(Encyclopedia)Ventris, Michael George Francis, 1922–56, English linguist. Ventris was a student of architecture, but he became interested in the untranslated Mycenaean scripts, particularly Linear B, which was fo...
 

Browse by Subject