Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Wheeler, John Archibald, 1911–2008, American physicist and educator, b. Jacksonville, Fla. Educated at Johns Hopkins (Ph.D., 1933), he joined the faculty at Princeton in 1938, and after 1976 was dir...

(Encyclopedia) Divine, Father, c.1882–1965, African-American religious leader, founder of the Peace Mission movement, b. probably near Savannah, Ga. and named George Baker. After preaching in the South, he moved t...

(Encyclopedia) Du Pont, Pierre Samuel, 1870–1954, American industrialist, b. Wilmington, Del., grad. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1890. Du Pont worked as a chemist with the family's company, helping to d...

(Encyclopedia) Condorcet, Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de märēˈ zhäN äNtwänˈ nēkôläˈ kärētäˈ märkēˈ də kôNdôrsāˈ [key], 1743–94, French mathematician, philosopher, and politic...

(Encyclopedia) women's clubs, groups that offer social, recreational, and cultural activities for adult females. Particularly strong in the United States, they became an important part of American town and village l...

(Encyclopedia) Wilder, Billy, 1906–2002, American film director, producer, and writer, b. Sucha, Galicia (now Poland) as Samuel Wilder. He wrote for films in Berlin, fled the Nazis, and arrived in Hollywood in 193...

(Encyclopedia) Patton, George Smith, Jr., 1885–1945, American general, b. San Gabriel, Calif. A graduate of West Point (1909), he served in World War I and was wounded while commanding a tank brigade in France. Su...

(Encyclopedia) anthem [ultimately from antiphon], short nonliturgical choral composition used in Protestant services, usually accompanied and having an English text. The term is used in a broader sense for “nation...

(Encyclopedia) Clare, John, 1793–1864, English poet. A romantic poet who wrote shortly after the vogue for such verse, he had a profound and singular gift for capturing nature in exquisitely specific detail. The s...

(Encyclopedia) Wiesel, Elie, 1928–2016, American writer, writing in French, b. Sighet, Romania. In 1944 the Nazis imprisoned him and his family at Auschwitz, an extermination camp, where his mother and sister were...