Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

feathers

(Encyclopedia) CE5 Structure of a bird feather feathers, outgrowths of the skin, constituting the plumage of birds. Feathers grow only along certain definite tracts (pterylae), which vary in different groups of ...

Capetians

(Encyclopedia)Capetians kəpēˈshənz [key], royal house of France that ruled continuously from 987 to 1328; it takes its name from Hugh Capet. Related branches of the family (see Valois; Bourbon) ruled France unt...

ovum

(Encyclopedia)ovum ōˈvəm [key], in biology, specialized plant or animal sex cell, also called the egg, or egg cell. It is the female sex cell, or female gamete; the male gamete is the sperm. The study of the ovu...

Milgrom, Paul Robert

(Encyclopedia)Milgrom, Paul Robert, 1948–, American economist, b. Detroit, Ph.D. Stanford, 1979. He has been a professor of economics at Stanford since 1987, and previously taught at Northwestern Univ. (1979–83...

Maillart, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Maillart, Robert mīyärˈ [key], 1872–1940, Swiss engineer, renowned for his inventive and beautiful reinforced-concrete bridges. Maillart's basic structural principles—integration of the support...

Hoxie, Robert Franklin

(Encyclopedia)Hoxie, Robert Franklin hŏkˈsē [key], 1868–1916, American economist, b. Edmeston, W of Cooperstown, N.Y., Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1905. He taught at the Univ. of Chicago from 1906 to 1916. A reali...

Huber, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Huber, Robert ho͞oˈbər [key], 1937–, German biochemist. After receiving his doctorate at Munich Technical Univ., he worked both there and at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry. With Hartmu...

Herschbach, Dudley Robert

(Encyclopedia)Herschbach, Dudley Robert hûrshˈbăk [key], 1932–, American chemist, b. San Jose, Calif., Ph.D. Harvard, 1958. In 1986, Herschbach shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Yuan T. Lee and John C. ...

Raikes, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Raikes, Robert rāks [key], 1735–1811, English philanthropist. In 1780 he organized a Sunday school, primarily for poor children, who were taught to read and to spell to enable them to read the Bibl...

Schenck, Robert Cumming

(Encyclopedia)Schenck, Robert Cumming skĕngk [key], 1809–90, American politician and diplomat, Union general in the Civil War, b. Franklin, Ohio. He studied law and practiced in Dayton. Schenck was a Whig in Con...
 

Browse by Subject