Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Peirce, Benjamin, 1809–80, American mathematician and astronomer, b. Salem, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1829. From 1833 he was a professor at Harvard; he helped establish the Harvard Observatory and was a...

(Encyclopedia) Mandan mănˈdăn, –dən [key], city (1990 pop. 15,177), seat of Morton co., S N.Dak., on the Missouri River opposite Bismarck; inc. 1881. A railroad division point, it is the distribution center fo...

(Encyclopedia) Oersted or Ørsted, Hans Christian häns krĭsˈtyän örˈstĭᵺ [key], 1777–1851, Danish physicist and chemist. He was professor at Copenhagen from 1806. His discovery (1819) that a magnetic need...

(Encyclopedia) Oil City, city (1990 pop. 11,949), Venango co., NW Pa., on the Allegheny River; inc. 1871. The city was founded after Edwin L. Drake struck (1859) oil nearby in Titusville. It was a refining and shipp...

(Encyclopedia) Paisley pāzˈlē [key], town (1991 pop. 84,330), Renfrewshire, W Scotland, on the White Cart Water, a stream. It has a thriving textile industry and is an extremely large producer of thread. Other ma...

(Encyclopedia) Pandora păndôrˈə [key], in Greek mythology, first woman on earth. Zeus ordered Hephaestus to create her as vengeance upon man and his benefactor, Prometheus. The gods endowed her with every charm,...

(Encyclopedia) market research, organized use of sample surveys, polls, focus groups, and other techniques to study market characteristics (e.g., ages and incomes of consumers; consumer attitudes) and improve the ef...

(Encyclopedia) Peterson, Roger Tory, 1908–96, American ornithologist, writer, and illustrator, b. Jamestown, N.Y. He became famous with his best-selling pocket-sized Field Guide to the Birds (1934) and is known fo...

(Encyclopedia) Werner, Alfred, 1866–1919, French-born Swiss chemist, Ph.D. Univ. of Zürich, 1890. Werner was a professor at the Univ. of Zürich from 1893 until his death in 1919. He was awarded the Nobel Prize i...

(Encyclopedia) Delaware dĕlˈəwâr, –wər [key], city (2020 pop. 41,302), seat of Delaware co., central Ohio, on the ...