Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Reines, Frederick, 1918–99, American physicist, b. Paterson, N.J., Ph.D. New York Univ., 1944. He was a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory (1944–59), a professor at Case Institute of Tec...

(Encyclopedia) attorney, agent put in place of another to manage particular affairs of the principal. An attorney in fact is an agent who conducts business under authority that is controlled and limited by a written...

(Encyclopedia) Roe v. Wade, case decided in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court. Along with Doe v. Bolton, this decision legalized abortion in the first trimester of ...

(Encyclopedia) Darrow, Clarence Seward, 1857–1938, American lawyer, b. Kinsman, Ohio. He first practiced law in Ashtabula, Ohio. In 1887 he moved to Chicago, where he was corporation counsel for several years and ...

(Encyclopedia) Carlos the Jackal, pseud. of the revolutionary and international terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, 1949–, b. Caracas, Venezuela. Son of an affluent Marxist lawyer, he joined the Communist party at ...

(Encyclopedia) Collor de Mello, Fernando fərnäNdo͞o kôlôrˈ də mĕlˈo͞o [key], 1949–, president of Brazil (1990–92). In 1990, he became the youngest president of Brazil following the first public electio...

(Encyclopedia) surrogate mother, a woman who agrees, usually by contract and for a fee, to bear a child for a couple who are childless because the wife is infertile or physically incapable of carrying a developing f...

(Encyclopedia) St. John, Oliver sĭnˈjən [key], 1598?–1673, English politician. He married (1638) a cousin of Oliver Cromwell. In 1637–38 he was, by his brilliant defense of John Hampden in the ship money case...

(Encyclopedia) Plessy v. Ferguson, case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1896. The court upheld an 1890 Louisiana statute mandating racially segregated but equal railroad carriages, ruling that the equal protect...

(Encyclopedia) electronegativity ĭlĕkˌtrōnĕgətĭvˈətē [key], in chemistry, tendency for an atom to attract a pair of electrons that it shares with another atom (see chemical bond). For example, the molecule...