Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Sillitoe, Alan, 1928–2010, English writer, b. Nottingham. The son of an illiterate tannery worker, he grew up in poverty, left school at 14, and was himself a factory worker as a teenager. One of th...

(Encyclopedia) Hitchings, George Herbert, 1905–98, American pharmacologist, b. Hoquiam, Wash., Ph.D. Harvard, 1933. Hitchings spent most of his career at Burroughs Wellcome Laboratories (1942–75), where he and f...

(Encyclopedia) Butler, Benjamin Franklin, 1795–1858, American political leader and cabinet officer, b. Columbia co., N.Y. Butler, like his former law associate, Martin Van Buren, was a member of the Albany Regency...

(Encyclopedia) McClintock, Sir Francis Leopold, 1819–1907, British arctic explorer. As a lieutenant in the navy he was assigned to his first arctic service in 1848, when Sir James Clark Ross went in search of the ...

(Encyclopedia) cape buffalo, species of short-haired African ungulate, or hoofed mammal, Syncerus caffer. The cape, or African, buffalo may reach 7 ft (2.1 m) in length, weigh more than 1,500 lb (670 kg), and reach ...

(Encyclopedia) Pax păks [key], in Roman religion, goddess of peace. Vespasian erected a temple to her at Rome. Her attributes were similar to those of the Greek Irene, the olive branch and the horn of plenty. ...

(Encyclopedia) Bellingshausen Sea, part of the S Pacific Ocean, W Antarctica, SW of Cape Horn between the Antarctic Peninsula and Amundsen Sea. The sea is named after Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshau...

(Encyclopedia) American Philosophical Society, first scientific society in America, founded (1743) in Philadelphia. It was an outgrowth of the Junto formed (1727) by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was the first secreta...

(Encyclopedia) Howe, Louis McHenry, 1871–1936, American journalist and political adviser to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, b. Indianapolis, Ind. He wrote about politics for several newspapers, then became involve...

(Encyclopedia) Chadwick, Florence May, 1918–95, American distance swimmer, b. San Diego, Calif. She began swimming at the age of six, and four years later she swam the San Diego Bay Channel, the first child to do ...