Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Vargas Llosa, Mario märˈyō värˈgäs yōˈsä [key], 1936–, Peruvian novelist and politician, b. Arequipa. Although his works contain much external realism, emphasizing the ugly and grotesque, h...

(Encyclopedia) typewriter, instrument for producing by manual operation characters similar to those of printing. Corresponding to each key on the instrument's keyboard is a steel type. Activated through a series of ...

(Encyclopedia) uncertainty principle, physical principle, enunciated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927, that places an absolute, theoretical limit on the combined accuracy of certain pairs of simultaneous, related measur...

(Encyclopedia) Whitehead, Alfred North, 1861–1947, English mathematician and philosopher, grad. Trinity College, Cambridge, 1884. There he was a lecturer in mathematics until 1911. At the Univ. of London he was a ...

(Encyclopedia) Rijksmuseum rīksˈmyo͞ozēˌəm [key], Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, founded in 1808 by Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland (see under Bonaparte), as the Great Royal Museum in the Royal Palace. I...

(Encyclopedia) Ruscha, Ed (Edward Joseph Ruscha 4th) ro͞oshāˈ [key], 1937–, American artist, b. Omaha, Neb. He is closely associated with Los Angeles, where he moved to attend (1956–60) the Chouinard Art Inst...

(Encyclopedia) Saint Paul's Cathedral, London, masterpiece of Sir Christopher Wren and one of the finest church designs of the English baroque. It stands at the head of Ludgate Hill, where, according to tradition, a...

(Encyclopedia) shaft sinking, excavation from the surface of an opening in the earth. Shafts, which are generally vertical, are usually distinguished from tunnels, which are horizontal. Little difficulty is experien...

(Encyclopedia) black hole, in astronomy, celestial object of such extremely intense gravity that it attracts everything near it and in some instances prevents everything, including light, from escaping. The term was...

(Encyclopedia) meteorite, meteor that survives the intense heat of atmospheric friction and reaches the earth's surface. Because of the destructive effects of this friction, only the very largest meteors become mete...