Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) International Monetary Fund (IMF), specialized agency of the United Nations, established in 1945. It was planned at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944), and its headquarters are in Washington, D.C. Th...

(Encyclopedia) ratite rătˈīt [key], common and general term for a variety of flightless birds characterized by a flat, raftlike sternum rather than the keeled sternum, designed to support flight muscles, typical ...

(Encyclopedia) McLoughlin, John məglŏkhˈlĭn, –glôfˈlĭn [key], 1784–1857, Canadian-American fur trader in Oregon, b. Rivière du Loup, near Quebec. A physician and then a trader, he was (1824–46) chief a...

(Encyclopedia) Martinson, Harry, 1904–78, Swedish writer. Orphaned early, Martinson was self-educated. His works reveal his appreciation of nature and his distrust of modern technological society. He is best known...

(Encyclopedia) Morton, Oliver Perry, 1823–77, American political leader, b. Salisbury, Ind. He was admitted (1847) to the bar and began practice in Centerville, Ind. Morton helped organize the Republican party in ...

(Encyclopedia) Cary, Joyce (Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary), 1888–1957, English author. From 1910 to 1920 he served as an administrator and soldier in Nigeria. Several of his early works, including Mister Johnson (1939),...

(Encyclopedia) bluestocking, derisive term originally applied to certain 18th-century women with pronounced literary interests. During the 1750s, Elizabeth Vesey held evening parties, at which the entertainment cons...

(Encyclopedia) Dalai Lama däˈlī läˈmə [key] [Tibetan,=oceanic teacher], title of one of the main leaders of Tibetan Buddhism. Believed like his predecessors to be the incarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesh...

(Encyclopedia) Hartline, Haldan Keffer, 1903–83, American physiologist, b. Bloomsburg, Pa., M.D. Johns Hopkins, 1927. From 1931 to 1949 (except for 1940–41), he was a researcher at the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Fo...

(Encyclopedia) Krutch, Joseph Wood kro͝och [key], 1893–1970, American author, editor, and teacher, b. Knoxville, Tenn., grad. Univ. of Tennessee, 1915, Ph.D. Columbia, 1923. He was on the editorial staff of the N...