Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Townes, Charles Hard, 1915–2015, American physicist and educator, b. Greenville, S.C. He was educated at Furman Univ., Duke, and the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1939), was on the tech...

(Encyclopedia) Chinese exclusion, policy of prohibiting immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States; initiated in 1882. From the time of the U.S. acquisition of California (1848) there had been a large infl...

(Encyclopedia) soap plant, any of various plants having cleansing properties. A few are of commercial importance, but most soap plants are used locally, as in early times, for toilet and laundry purposes. The soapba...

(Encyclopedia) Colorado [1] kŏlərădˈə, –rădˈō, –räˈdō [2] kŏlərāˈdə, –räˈdə [key]. 1 Great river of the SW United States, 1,450 mi (2,334 km) long, rising in the Rocky Mts. of N Colo., and f...

(Encyclopedia) Channel Islands National Park: see Channel Islands, California; National Parks and Monuments (table)national parks and monuments (table). ...

(Encyclopedia) Irvine ûrˈvīn [key], city (2020 pop. 307,670), Orange co., SW Calif.; inc. 1971. Its indus...

(Encyclopedia) Hilgard, Eugene Woldemar hĭlˈgärd [key], 1833–1916, American agricultural chemist and geologist, Ph.D. Univ. of Heidelberg, 1853. Born in Germany, he was brought to the United States in 1836. An ...

(Encyclopedia) Markham, Edwin, 1852–1940, American poet, b. Oregon City, Oreg. He grew up in California and later taught school there. In 1899 he achieved widespread popularity for the poem “The Man with the Hoe...

(Encyclopedia) Brown, Elmer Ellsworth, 1861–1934, American educator, b. Chautauqua co., N.Y., grad. Illinois State Normal Univ., 1881, and studied at the Univ. of Michigan and in Germany. He taught education at th...

(Encyclopedia) Castle Mountains National Monument, 20,920 acres (8,466 hectares), SE California. Surrounded on three sides by the Mojave National Preserve (see Mojave Desert), the monument contains Native American a...