Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Wilson, Alexander, 1766–1813, American ornithologist, b. Scotland. He came to the United States c.1794, taught in rural New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and became a citizen in 1804. Encouraged by Willi...

(Encyclopedia) Regiomontanus rēˌjēōmŏnˌtāˈnəs [key] [Lat.,=belonging to the royal mountain, i.e., to Königsberg], 1436–76, German astronomer and mathematician, b. Königsberg. His original name was Johan...

(Encyclopedia) Buck, Linda B., 1947–, American neurobiologist, b. Seattle, Wash., Ph.D. Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 1980. Buck taught at Harvard Medi...

(Encyclopedia) Anderssen, Adolf (Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen), 1818–79, German chess player, b. Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland). He graduated (1847) from Breslau Univ. and later was a mathematics professor there. An...

(Encyclopedia) Gratian, fl. 1140, Italian legal scholar, founder of the science of canon law. Almost nothing is known of his life beyond the fact that he was a monk, almost certainly Camaldolite, and that he taught ...

(Encyclopedia) Milo mīˈlŏn [key], fl. 500 b.c., athlete of ancient Greece, b. Crotona. He won numerous victories in wrestling at the Olympic and Pythian games. He is said to have carried a heifer on his shoulders...

(Encyclopedia) joinery, craft of assembling exposed woodwork in the interiors of buildings. Where carpentry refers to the rougher, simpler, and primarily structural elements of wood assembling, joinery has to do wit...

(Encyclopedia) Basie, Count (William Basie) bāˈsē [key], 1904–84, American jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer, b. Red Bank, N.J. After working in dance halls and vaudeville in New York City, Basie moved to ...

(Encyclopedia) Ade, George, 1866–1944, American humorist and dramatist, b. Kentland, Ind., grad. Purdue Univ., 1887. His newspaper sketches and books attracted attention for their racy and slangy idiom and for the...

(Encyclopedia) Berlichingen, Götz von götsˈ fən bĕrˈlĭkhĭng-ən [key], 1480–1562, German knight and adventurer. The head of a band of free soldiers, he lost (1504) his right hand in the battle of Landshut ...