Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) New Siberian Islands, Rus. Novosibirskiye Ostrova, archipelago, c.10,900 sq mi (28,200 sq km), N Siberian Russia, in the Arctic Ocean between the Laptev and East Siberian seas, part of the Sakha Repub...

(Encyclopedia) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), civilian agency of the U.S. federal government with the mission of conducting research and developing operational programs in the areas of space e...

(Encyclopedia) Christchurch, city, E South Island, New Zealand, on the Avon River. It is the second largest city in New Zealand by population (2020) and the commercial...

(Encyclopedia) New Red Sandstone, name for the thick red layer of the Triassic formation in Great Britain (see Triassic period). It is many thousands of feet thick and is composed chiefly of red sandstones, clays, a...

(Encyclopedia) New Economic Policy (NEP), official economic reconstruction program of the USSR from 1921 to 1928. It replaced the economic policies of “war Communism” (1918–21), an emergency program establishe...

(Encyclopedia) Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, philanthropic institution founded in 1994 by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, to improve the lives of the poor throughout the world, primarily th...

(Encyclopedia) Perkins, Frances, 1882–1965, U.S. Secretary of Labor (1933–45), b. Boston. She worked at Hull House, was executive secretary of the New York Consumers' League (1910–12) and of the New York Commi...

(Encyclopedia) Parker, Francis Wayland, 1837–1902, American educator, b. Bedford, N.H. At the age of 16 he began his first job as a teacher in New Hampshire. After serving with the Union army in the Civil War, he ...

(Encyclopedia) New Mexico State University, at Las Cruces; land-grant and state supported; coeducational; chartered and opened 1889 as a college. It became New Mexico State Univ. of Engineering, Agriculture, and Sci...

(Encyclopedia) Neusner, Jacob, 1932–2016, American scholar and historian of Judaism, b. West Hartford, Conn, B.A. Harvard, 1953, M.A. Jewish Theological Seminary, 1960), Ph.D. Columbia, 1960. Regarded as the world...