Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Farlow, William Gilson, 1844–1919, American botanist, b. Boston, grad. Harvard, 1866. His chief contributions were made in the study of cryptogamic and parasitic plants. Many eminent botanists recei...

(Encyclopedia) Drummond, William, 1585–1649, Scottish poet. He was educated at Edinburgh and in France, retiring in 1610 to Hawthornden, where he spent his life as a gentleman of letters. His first volume of verse...

(Encyclopedia) Collins, William, 1721–59, English poet. He was one of the great lyricists of the 18th cent. While he was still at Oxford he published Persian Ecologues (1742), which was written when he was 17. Uns...

(Encyclopedia) Portland, William Bentinck, 1st earl of, 1649–1709, Dutch statesman in England. He was William III's most trusted personal adviser. In 1677 he engaged in negotiating the marriage of William (then pr...

(Encyclopedia) mass spectrograph, device used to separate electrically charged particles according to their masses; a form of the instrument known as a mass spectrometer is often used to measure the masses of isotop...

(Encyclopedia) Dugdale, Sir William, 1605–86, English antiquarian. His chief works are Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), The Baronage of England (1675–76), and the greater part of Monasticon Anglicanum (3 vol....

(Encyclopedia) Otterbein, Philip William ŏtˈərbīnˌ [key], 1726–1813, German-American clergyman, a founder of the United Brethren in Christ. After pastoral work in Germany, he emigrated (1752) to America as a ...

(Encyclopedia) Pepperrell, Sir William, 1696–1759, American colonial military commander, b. Kittery Point, Maine (then part of Massachusetts). A wealthy merchant, landowner, and businessman, he became a colonel in...

(Encyclopedia) Donovan, William Joseph dŏnˈəvən [key], 1883–1959, U.S. lawyer and government official, b. Buffalo, N.Y., grad. Columbia law school. Distinguished service in World War I won him medals and the n...

(Encyclopedia) Corcoran, William Wilson kôrˈkərən [key], 1798–1888, American financier, philanthropist, and art collector, b. Georgetown, D.C. After becoming a successful banker, he retired in 1854 and devoted...