Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Amyot or Amiot, Joseph ämyōˈ [key], 1718–1794?, French Roman Catholic missionary in China, a Jesuit. He wrote a long treatise on the history, sciences, and customs of the Chinese (15 vol., 1776�...

(Encyclopedia) Needham, Joseph nēdˈəm [key], 1900–1995, British biochemist, historian of science, and sinologist, b. London. He had a lifelong association with Cambridge, where he was educated (Ph.D. 1924), tau...

(Encyclopedia) Kohn, Walter, 1923–2016, American physicist, b. Vienna, Austria, Ph.D. Harvard, 1948. The son of Austrian Jews, he was transported to England in a rescue convoy after Nazi Germany absorbed (1938) Au...

(Encyclopedia) Dandy, Walter Edward, 1886–1946, American neurosurgeon. Having studied with Harvey Cushing at Johns Hopkins, Dandy soon made himself a notable figure in the developing specialty of neurosurgery. His...

(Encyclopedia) Sickert, Walter Richard, 1860–1942, English painter. After a brief career on the stage Sickert was apprenticed to Whistler and later worked with Degas. His preferred subjects were scenes of music ha...

(Encyclopedia) Bates, Henry Walter, 1825–92, English naturalist and explorer. In 1848 he went with A. R. Wallace to Brazil, where he explored the upper Amazon, returning in 1859 with some 8,000 new zoological spec...

(Encyclopedia) Wriston, Walter Bigelow, 1919–2005, American banker, b. Middletown, Conn., grad. Wesleyan (B.A., 1941); Fletcher School, Tufts Univ. (M.A., 1942). Widely considered the most important and influentia...

(Encyclopedia) Alvarez, Luis Walter, 1911–88, American physicist, b. San Francisco, grad. Univ. of Chicago, 1932, Ph.D. 1936. He was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of a large number of r...

(Encyclopedia) Cornell, Joseph, American artist, 1903–72, b. Nyack, N.Y. Cornell is best known for his surrealist-flavored shadow boxes. These are relatively small constructions, within glass-fronted shallow boxes...

(Encyclopedia) Kalckreuth, Leopold Karl Walter, Graf von lāˈōpôlt kärl välˈtər gräf fən kälkˈroit [key], 1855–1928, German painter and graphic artist. He taught at the Weimar and Karlsruhe academies an...