Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Grey, Zane, 1872–1939, American writer of Western stories, b. Zanesville, Ohio, as Pearl Zane Gray, grad. Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1896. His melodramatic tales of the West and Southwest are vivid in t...

(Encyclopedia) Denham, Sir John dĕnˈəm [key], 1615–69, English poet and dramatist. His fame rests largely on two works: Cooper's Hill (1642), a topographical poem, combining descriptions of scenery with moral r...

(Encyclopedia) agnosticism ăgnŏsˈtĭsĭzəm [key], form of skepticism that holds that the existence of God cannot be logically proved or disproved. Among prominent agnostics have been Auguste Comte, Herbert Spenc...

(Encyclopedia) Enders, John Franklin, 1897–1985, American bacteriologist, b. West Hartford, Conn., grad. Yale, 1920, Ph.D. Harvard, 1930. He began teaching at Harvard in 1929, became associate professor in 1942, a...

(Encyclopedia) Puryear, Martin, 1941–2019, American sculptor, b. Washington, D.C. An African American, he served in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, and became interested in African crafts and in the themes of cap...

(Encyclopedia) Prescott, William Hickling, 1796–1859, American historian, b. Salem, Mass. He entered his father's law office, but was compelled by a serious eye injury to abandon law. He received medical attention...

(Encyclopedia) ivory-billed woodpecker, common name for the largest of the North American woodpeckers, Campephilus principalis. Once plentiful in Southern hardwood forests, it was believed to be extinct or nearing e...

(Encyclopedia) Kennebunkport kĕnˌĭbŭngkpôrtˈ, kĕnˌĭbŭngkˈpôrt [key], town (1990 pop. 1,100), York co., S Maine, on the Atlantic coast; settled 1629, inc. 1653. The early town, called Arundel, appears in ...

(Encyclopedia) Marley, Bob (Robert Nesta Marley), 1945–81, Jamaican reggae singer, songwriter, and guitarist. As a member of the Wailers, a reggae band that included...

(Encyclopedia) Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman, American civil-rights workers in the South during the 1960s. Michael Schwerner (b. 1939) and Andrew Goodman (b. 1943), both white New Yorkers, went to Neshoba co., Miss...