Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) herbarium, collection of dried and mounted plant specimens used in systematic botany. To preserve their form and color, plants collected in the field are spread flat in sheets of newsprint and dried, ...

(Encyclopedia) Koirala, Girija Prasad gĭrēˈjə präsädˈ koiräˈlä [key], 1925–2010, Nepalese political leader. He grew up in N India, where his family lived in exile. He helped found the Nepal Trade Union C...

(Encyclopedia) Gentz, Friedrich von frēˈdrĭkh fən gĕnts [key], 1764–1832, German conservative political theorist. Admirer of the English political system of checks and balances, Gentz was critical of the Fren...

(Encyclopedia) Cartier-Bresson, Henri äNrēˈ kärtēāˈ-brĕsôNˈ [key], 1908–2004, French photojournalist, b. Chanteloup, near Paris. Cartier-Bresson is renowned for his countless memorable images of 20th-cen...

(Encyclopedia) Carver, Raymond, 1938–88, American short-story writer, b. Clatskanie, Oreg. He was raised in the Pacific Northwest, where he often set his sparely written tales of everyday blue-collar life. His per...

(Encyclopedia) Homer, Winslow, 1836–1910, American landscape, marine, and genre painter. Homer was born in Boston, where he later worked as a lithographer and illustrator. In 1861 he was sent to the Civil War batt...

(Encyclopedia) Cornish, language belonging to the Brythonic group of the Celtic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. See Celtic languages. See P. B. Ellis, The Cornish Language and Its Literature (19...

(Encyclopedia) Hockney, David, 1937–, English painter, studied Royal College of Art. Moving from a distorted, semiexpressionist form of pop art, Hockney developed a highly personal realistic style, producing image...

(Encyclopedia) Oppenheimer, J. Robert ŏpˈənhīˌmər [key], 1904–67, American physicist, b. New York City, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1925), Ph.D. Univ. of Göttingen, 1927. He taught at the Univ. of California and t...

(Encyclopedia) Welles, Orson, 1915–85, American actor, director, and producer, b. Kenosha, Wis. From childhood he evinced a precocious talent and lofty sense of self-assurance in theatrical matters. He began actin...