Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Chanel, Coco (Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel) shənĕlˈ [key], 1883–1971, French fashion designer b. Saumur. She established a millinery shop in Deauville in 1909, founded her first house of couture ther...

(Encyclopedia) Chopin, Frédéric François frādārēkˈ fräNswäˈ shôpăNˈ [key], 1810–49, composer for the piano, b. near Warsaw, of French and Polish parentage. His lyrical, often melancholy, compositions ...

(Encyclopedia) Pascin, Jules zhül päskăNˈ [key], 1885–1930, American painter, b. Bulgaria. Born Julius Pincas, he moved to Paris in 1905. He acquired American citizenship in 1914. Essentially a draftsman, belo...

(Encyclopedia) Mun, Thomas mŭn [key], 1571–1641, English writer on economics. A merchant in Italy and the Levant, he became (1615) a director in the East India Company. In his Discourse of Trade from England unto...

(Encyclopedia) Bridges, Calvin Blackman, 1889–1938, American geneticist, b. Schuyler Falls, N.Y., grad. Columbia (B.S., 1912; Ph.D., 1916). In his research he collaborated with T. H. Morgan, A. H. Sturtevant, and ...

(Encyclopedia) Calvin, Melvin, 1911–97, American organic chemist and educator, b. St. Paul, Minn., grad. Michigan College of Mining and Technology, 1931, Ph.D. Univ. of Minnesota, 1935. In 1937 he joined the facul...

(Encyclopedia) Cedar Creek, small tributary of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, N of Strasburg, N Va. It was the scene of a Civil War battle (Oct. 19, 1864) in which Union general P. H. Sheridan defeated J. A...

(Encyclopedia) Firbank, Ronald (Arthur Annesley Ronald Firbank), 1886–1926, English author. Of a delicate and eccentric nature, Firbank lived the life of a leisured aesthete. His novels, which have appealed to a s...

(Encyclopedia) angstrom ăngˈstrəm [key], abbr. Å, unit of length equal to 10−10 meter (0.0000000001 meter); it is used to measure the wavelengths of visible light and of other forms of electromagnetic radiatio...

(Encyclopedia) Barton, Elizabeth, 1506?–1534, English prophet, called the Maid of Kent or the Nun of Kent. She was a domestic servant who, after a period of illness, began (c.1525) to go into trances and to utter ...