Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Ingersoll, Robert Green, 1833–99, American orator and lawyer, b. Dresden, N.Y. The son of a Congregational minister who eventually settled in Illinois, Ingersoll was admitted (1854) to the bar and b...

(Encyclopedia) Curl, Robert Floyd, Jr., 1933–, American chemist, b. Alice, Tex., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1957. Curl has been a professor at Rice Univ. in Houston, Tex., since 1958. In 1996 he was awar...

(Encyclopedia) Martínez Sierra, Gregorio grāgōˈrēō märtēˈnĕth syāˈrä [key], 1881–1947, Spanish dramatist, novelist, and poet. His masterpiece is Canción de cuna (1911, tr. The Cradle Song, 1917), but...

(Encyclopedia) medlar mĕdˈlər [key], small deciduous tree (Mespilus germanica) of the family Rosaceae (rose family), native to Europe and Asia. It has luxuriant foliage and large white or pinkish flowers; in the ...

(Encyclopedia) Mooney, Thomas J., 1883–1942, American labor agitator, b. Chicago. He was an active leader in several violent labor struggles in California before 1916 and was convicted as a participant in the bomb...

(Encyclopedia) boulder, large rock fragment formed by detachment from its parent consolidated rock by weathering and erosion. In engineering and geology, especially in the United States, the term is applied to loose...

(Encyclopedia) Coffin, William Anderson, 1855–1925, American landscape and figure painter and art critic, studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts and under Léon Bonnat in Paris. His landscapes were awarded numero...

(Encyclopedia) sublimation sŭblĭmāˈshən [key], change of a solid substance directly to a vapor without first passing through the liquid state. The term is also used to describe the reverse process of the gas ch...

(Encyclopedia) Lewis, John Robert, 1940–2020, African-American politician and civil-rights leader, b. near Troy, Ala., B.A. American Baptist Theological Seminary, 19...

(Encyclopedia) Laird, Melvin Robert, 1922–2016, American politician, U.S. secretary of defense (1969–73), b. Omaha, Nebr. After serving (1942–46) in the navy during World War II, he entered politics as a Repub...