Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) anomie, a social condition characterized by instability, the breakdown of social norms, institutional disorganization, and a divorce between socially valid goals and available means for achieving them...

(Encyclopedia) Woodsworth, James Shaver, 1874–1942, Canadian politician. Having done social welfare work while serving as a Methodist minister, he later gave up the ministry to devote himself wholly to labor and w...

(Encyclopedia) Tanguy, Yves ēv täNgēˈ [key], 1900–1955, French surrealist painter. At first a merchant seaman, he saw a picture by Chirico in 1923 and instantly decided to take up painting. He created vast ima...

(Encyclopedia) Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), established (1941) within the Office of Production Management by executive order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It was created to promote the fulle...

(Encyclopedia) Whittier, John Greenleaf hwĭtˈēər [key], 1807–92, American Quaker poet and reformer, b. near Haverhill, Mass. Whittier was a pioneer in regional literature as well as a crusader for many humanit...

(Encyclopedia) biochemistry, science concerned chiefly with the chemistry of biological processes; it attempts to utilize the tools and concepts of chemistry, particularly organic and physical chemistry, for elucida...

(Encyclopedia) Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna blətvătˈskē [key], 1831–91, Russian theosophist and occultist. She was the daughter of a German named Hahn who had settled in Russia and who was distantly connected wi...

(Encyclopedia) Houdini, Harry ho͞odēˈnē [key], 1874–1926, American magician and writer, b. Budapest, Hungary, as Erik Weisz, later modified to Ehrich Weiss; his stage name honors the French magician Houdin. By...

(Encyclopedia) Styron, William, 1925–2006, American novelist, b. Newport News, Va., grad. Duke, 1947. His fiction is often powerful, deeply felt, poetic, and elegiac. He became well known for his novel The Confess...

(Encyclopedia) Valentinus văləntēˈnəs [key], fl. c.135–c.160, founder of the Valentinians, the most celebrated of the Gnostic sects (see Gnosticism) of the 2d cent. The little that is known of his life is fou...