Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Poiret, Paul pōl pwärĕˈ [key], 1879–1944, French couturier, b. Paris. He served an apprenticeship with Jacques Doucet in the 1890s, moved to the Maison Worth in 1900, and in 1903 opened his own ...

(Encyclopedia) Étaix, Pierre, 1928–2016, French film actor and director. He excelled at highly physical slapstick comedy, influenced by his background as a circus and cabaret performer, and by Buster Keaton and C...

(Encyclopedia) Leclerc, Charles Victor Emmanuel shärl vēktôrˈ ĕmänüĕlˈ ləklĕrˈ [key], 1772–1802, French general. He served under Napoleon Bonaparte in the Italian campaign, married (1797) Pauline Bonap...

(Encyclopedia) Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench, mârˌēănˈəz [key], elongated depression on the Pacific Ocean floor, 210 mi (338 km) SW of Guam. It is the deepest known depression on the earth's surface, havin...

(Encyclopedia) Périer, Casimir Pierre käzēmērˈ pyĕr pĕryāˈ [key], 1777–1832, French statesman. He was a member of a wealthy bourgeois family. His father, Claude Périer, a manufacturer and financier of Gr...

(Encyclopedia) Billaud-Varenne, Jean Nicolas zhäk nēkōläˈ bēyōˈ-värĕnˈ [key], 1756–1819, French revolutionary. A violent antimonarchist in the Convention, the revolutionary national assembly, he and Jea...

(Encyclopedia) Cordeliers kôrdəlyāˈ [key], political club of the French Revolution. Founded (1790) as the Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, it was called after its original meeting ...

(Encyclopedia) Franklin, Rosalind Elsie, 1920–58, English molecular biologist and chemist, grad. Newnham College, Cambridge (1941). She spent most of the war years (1942–45) working for the British Coal Utilisat...

(Encyclopedia) Jussieu zhüsyöˈ [key], French family of distinguished botanists. Antoine de Jussieu, 1686–1758, was director of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. He edited Jacques Barrelier's posthumously published...

(Encyclopedia) emperor [Lat. imperator=one holding supreme power, especially applied to generals], the sovereign head of an empire. In the Roman republic the term imperator referred to the chief military commander a...