Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Pousette-Dart, Richard, 1916–92, American painter, b. St. Paul, Minn. The son of an artist and a poet and largely self-taught, he was a member of the first generation of abstract expressionism. He l...

(Encyclopedia) Dempsey, Jack (William Harrison Dempsey), 1895–1983, American boxer, b. Manassa, Colo. Dempsey, called the “Manassa Mauler,” emerged from fights on saloon floors near mining camps to become (191...

(Encyclopedia) Tilton, Theodore, 1835–1907, American journalist, b. New York City. After working for the New York Observer he was (1863–71) editor in chief of the Independent, a Congregationalist weekly. He late...

(Encyclopedia) Randall, John Ernest, Jr., 1924–2020, American ichthyologist, b. Los Angeles, Ph.D. Univ. of Hawaii, Manoa, 1955. A marine taxonomist, he named 30 new genera and hundreds of new species of fish. Par...

(Encyclopedia) Still, William Grant, 1895–1978, American composer, b. Woodville, Miss. Still was of Native American, African-American, and European ancestry. He studied music at Oberlin, with Chadwick at the New E...

(Encyclopedia) Thurber, James, 1894–1961, American humorist, b. Columbus, Ohio, studied at Ohio State Univ. After working on various newspapers he served on the staff of the New Yorker from 1927 to 1933 and was la...

(Encyclopedia) Wigglesworth, Michael, 1631–1705, American clergyman and poet, b. England, grad. Harvard, 1651. His family emigrated to New England in 1638. A devoted minister at Malden, Mass., he also practiced me...

(Encyclopedia) Murphy, William Parry, 1892–1987, American physician, b. Stoughton, Wis., M.D. Harvard, 1920. He taught at Harvard from 1923 and was associated with the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, in Boston, from ...

(Encyclopedia) Parrington, Vernon Louis, 1871–1929, American literary historian and scholar, b. Aurora, Ill. His cultural interpretation of American literature was an expression of his belief in democratic idealis...

(Encyclopedia) Carter, Elizabeth, 1717–1806, English poet and translator. Under the pen name Eliza she contributed for years to the Gentleman's Magazine. One of the group of 18th-century women known as the bluesto...