Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Roland rōˈlənd [key], the great French hero of the medieval Charlemagne cycle of chansons de geste, immortalized in the Chanson de Roland (11th or 12th cent.). Existence of an early Roland poem is ...

(Encyclopedia) James Bay Project, a colossal hydroelectric development of the rivers emptying into the E James Bay, central Quebec, Canada. La Grande Phase I, finished in 1985, created the world's largest undergroun...

(Encyclopedia) Sastre, Alfonso älfōnˈsō säˈstrā [key], 1926–, Spanish dramatist, essayist, and critic, b. Madrid. Approaching his work from a Marxist and existentialist point of view, he explores the proble...

(Encyclopedia) Lerwick lûrˈwĭk, lĕrˈĭk [key], island town (1991 est. pop. 7,336), Shetland Islands, extreme N Scotland. Lerwick is the northernmost town in Great Britain. Located on the southeastern coast of M...

(Encyclopedia) Holmström, Bengt, 1949–, Finnish economist, b. Helsinki, Ph.D. Stanford, 1978. He has spent almost all his career in academia, at Northwestern Univ. (1979–83), Yale (1983–94), and the Massachus...

(Encyclopedia) Newberry, Walter Loomis, 1804–68, American merchant and banker, b. East Windsor (in the section now South Windsor), Conn. In 1822 he entered the shipping business with his brother Oliver in Buffalo,...

(Encyclopedia) Ostrom, Elinor Awan, 1933–2012, American political economist, b. Los Angeles, Ph.D. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, 1965. She was on the faculty of the Univ. of Indiana, Bloomington, from 1965 unt...

(Encyclopedia) Whalley, Edward hwāˈlē, hwôˈ– [key], d. 1675?, English regicide. During the English civil war he served under his cousin Oliver Cromwell in the parliamentary army. He was given custody of Charl...

(Encyclopedia) Digby, Sir Kenelm, 1603–65, English author and man of affairs. In 1628 he conducted a highly successful privateering raid against a French and Venetian fleet at Scanderoon (now Iskenderun, Turkey). ...

(Encyclopedia) Capecchi, Mario Renato, 1937–, American geneticist, b. Verona, Italy, Ph.D. Harvard, 1967. On the faculty at Harvard from 1967 to 1973, Capecchi became a professor at the Univ. of Utah School of Med...