Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Otto, Frei Paul ôˈtō [key], 1925–2015, German architect. Most notable for his tensile and pneumatic structures, Otto was among the first major architects to experiment with lightweight design. H...

(Encyclopedia) Nicolai, Otto ôˈtō nēkōläˈē, nēˈkōlī [key], 1810–49, German composer. His opera Il Templario (1840), after Scott's Ivanhoe, was successful, but his masterpiece was the comic opera The Me...

(Encyclopedia) Schulze-Delitzsch, Hermann hĕrˈmän sho͝olˈtsə-dāˈlĭch [key], 1808–83, German liberal politician and economic reformer. Believing in economic self-help by cooperative associations, he founde...

(Encyclopedia) Fried, Alfred Hermann älˈfrāt hĕrˈmän frēt [key], 1864–1921, Austrian pacifist. He moved to Berlin, where he was a bookseller and a writer. Influenced by Bertha von Suttner, he devoted himsel...

(Encyclopedia) Wissmann, Hermann von hĕrˈmän fən vĭsˈmän [key], 1853–1905, German explorer in Africa. He crossed (1880–82) Africa from Luanda to Zanzibar and, on behalf of Leopold II of Belgium, explored ...

(Encyclopedia) Ammann, Othmar Hermann ôtˈmär, ŏˈmŏn [key], 1879–1965, American civil engineer, b. Switzerland, grad. Federal Polytechnic Institute, Zürich, 1902. He came to the United States in 1904 and was...

(Encyclopedia) Otto, Nikolaus August nēˈkōlous ouˈgo͝ost ôˈtō [key], 1832–91, German engineer. He was coinventor (1867) of an internal-combustion engine, and he devised (1876) the four-stroke Otto cycle, w...

(Encyclopedia) Bütschli, Otto ôˈtō büchˈlē [key], 1848–1920, German zoologist. He was professor of zoology at the Univ. of Heidelberg. His researches on invertebrate animals advanced knowledge of the develo...

(Encyclopedia) Sverdrup, Otto svĕrˈdro͝op [key], 1855–1930, Norwegian arctic explorer. A companion of Fridtjof Nansen on the voyage across Greenland in 1888 and on Nansen's later (1893–96) polar expedition, ...

(Encyclopedia) Jespersen, Otto ŏˈtō yĕsˈpərsən [key], 1860–1943, Danish philologist. Professor of English language and literature at the Univ. of Copenhagen and later rector there, Jespersen first earned a ...