Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) mechanism, philosophical theory about the nature of organic systems, holding that organisms are machines in the sense that they are material systems. Mechanism seeks to explain biological processes, i...

(Encyclopedia) Dillinger, John dĭlˈĭnjər [key], 1902–34, American bank robber, probably b. Indianapolis. Paroled after serving a prison term for attempted robbery, Dillinger organized a gang and terrorized the...

(Encyclopedia) Allen, Richard, 1760–1831, American clergyman, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He was born a slave in Philadelphia and purchased his freedom. He became pastor of a black group tha...

(Encyclopedia) Remarque, Erich Maria āˈrĭkh märēˈä rəmärkˈ [key], 1898–1970, German-American novelist, whose original name was Erich Paul Remark. From his experience of trench warfare during World War I,...

(Encyclopedia) Frederick William I, 1688–1740, king of Prussia (1713–40), son and successor of Frederick I. He continued the administrative reforms and the process of centralization begun by Frederick William, t...

(Encyclopedia) Frost, Robert, 1874–1963, American poet, b. San Francisco. Perhaps the most popular and beloved of 20th-century American poets, Frost wrote of the character, people, and landscape of New England in ...

(Encyclopedia) Sebald, W. G. (Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald), 1944–2001, German novelist, grad. Freiburg Univ. (1965). Sebald's novels are dense, elegiac, and meditative. They mingle fiction with history and th...

(Encyclopedia) dolphin, aquatic mammal, any of the small toothed whales of the family Delphinidae, numbering more than 50 species. These include the true, or beaked, dolphins, the killer whale, the pilot whale, and ...

(Encyclopedia) neutron, uncharged elementary particle of slightly greater mass than the proton. It was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932. The stable isotopes of all elements except hydrogen and helium contain a n...

(Encyclopedia) Wilberforce, Samuel wĭlˈbərfôrs [key], 1805–73, English prelate; son of William Wilberforce. In 1845 he became bishop of Oxford. He did not support the Oxford movement; instead, he attempted to ...