Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Cobbett, William kŏbˈĭt [key], 1763?–1835, British journalist and reformer. The son of a farm laborer, he ran away from home at 14 and later joined the British army. He resigned in order to expos...

(Encyclopedia) Murphy, William Parry, 1892–1987, American physician, b. Stoughton, Wis., M.D. Harvard, 1920. He taught at Harvard from 1923 and was associated with the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, in Boston, from ...

(Encyclopedia) Nicholson, Sir William, 1872–1949, English woodcut artist, illustrator, and painter. The striking contrasts of black and white of his woodcutting technique were used to great effect on posters, on w...

(Encyclopedia) Orpen, Sir William, 1878–1931, British portrait and genre painter, b. Ireland. He is best known for his scenes of Irish daily life, his paintings and sketches of life at the front in World War I, an...

(Encyclopedia) Foote, Arthur William, 1853–1937, American organist, teacher, and composer, b. Salem, Mass.; pupil of J. K. Paine at Harvard. He was organist (1878–1910) at the First Unitarian Church in Boston, w...

(Encyclopedia) Fowler, William Alfred, 1911–95, American nuclear astrophysicist, b. Pittsburgh. While a professor at the California Institute of Technology, Fowler studied how chemical elements are formed in nucle...

(Encyclopedia) Waddington, William Henry, 1826–94, French statesman and archaeologist, of English descent. Waddington was minister of education (1876–77) and was appointed foreign minister in 1877. He represente...

(Encyclopedia) Baldwin, Matthias William, 1795–1866, American industrialist and philanthropist, b. Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), N.J. After earlier business successes, Baldwin became interested in steam-engine pr...

(Encyclopedia) Bibb, William Wyatt, 1781–1820, first governor of Alabama (1817–20), b. Amelia co., Va. Graduated in medicine from the Univ. of Pennsylvania (1801), he began practice in Petersburg, Ga. He was a s...

(Encyclopedia) White, William Hale, pseud. Mark Rutherford, 1831–1913, English novelist. He studied to become a clergyman, but instead became (1854) a clerk in the admiralty, rising in 1879 to assistant director o...