Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Olaf I (Olaf Tryggvason) ōˈläf trügˈväsōn [key], c.963–1000, king of Norway (995–1000), great-grandson of Harold I. His early life of exile and slavery is surrounded with romantic legend, a...

(Encyclopedia) Bodenheim, Maxwell bōˈdənhīm [key], 1893–1954, American novelist and poet, b. Hermanville, Miss. His poetry, which incorporates many techniques of the imagists, is cynical and often dwells on th...

(Encyclopedia) Branson, city (2020 pop. 12,638), Taney and Stone cos., SW Mo.; inc. 1912. Located in the Ozark mountains, the town was originally established when Reub...

(Encyclopedia) Curl, Robert Floyd, Jr., 1933–, American chemist, b. Alice, Tex., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1957. Curl has been a professor at Rice Univ. in Houston, Tex., since 1958. In 1996 he was awar...

(Encyclopedia) Jeans, Sir James Hopwood, 1887–1946, English mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was professor of applied mathematics at Princeton (1905–9), later lectured at Cambridge (1910–12) and Ox...

(Encyclopedia) Healey, Denis Winston Healey, Baron, 1917–2015, British political leader, grad. Oxford (1940). He served in the British army (1940–45), then joined the Labour party and began a long career in parl...

(Encyclopedia) Gorton, Sir John Grey, 1911–2002, Australian political leader, b. Melbourne. A fighter pilot in World War II, he was elected to the senate as a Liberal in 1949. He held a number of cabinet posts in ...

(Encyclopedia) Norsemen, name given to the Scandinavian Vikings who raided and settled on the coasts of the European continent in the 9th and 10th cent. They are also referred to as Northmen or Normans. Recent resea...

(Encyclopedia) Birney, James Gillespie bûrˈnē [key], 1792–1857, American abolitionist, b. Danville, Ky. He practiced law at Danville from 1814 to 1818, before he moved to Alabama, where he served one term in th...

(Encyclopedia) Hamilton, Sir William Rowan, 1805–65, Irish mathematician and astronomer, b. Dublin. A child prodigy, he had mastered 13 languages by the age of 13 and was still an undergraduate when he became prof...