Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

116 results found

Moon, Warren

(Encyclopedia)Moon, Warren (Harold Warren Moon, Jr.), 1956–, African-American football player, b. Los Angeles. Moon quarterbacked the Univ. of Washington Huskies to a Rose Bowl title in 1978, but he went undrafte...

monorail

(Encyclopedia)monorail, railway system that uses cars that run on a single rail. Typically the rail is run overhead and the cars are either suspended from it or run above it. Driving power is transmitted from the c...

Riggs, Bobby

(Encyclopedia)Riggs, Bobby (Robert Larimore Riggs), 1918–95, U.S. tennis player, b. Los Angeles. Playing tennis from the age of 11, Riggs won several tournaments in the 1930s and helped the U.S. team win the Davi...

Jones, Jesse Holman

(Encyclopedia)Jones, Jesse Holman, 1874–1956, U.S. Secretary of Commerce (1940–45), b. Robertson co., Tenn. A lumber magnate, banker, and millionaire of Houston, Tex., Jones was appointed (1932) by President Ho...

Gabor, Dennis

(Encyclopedia)Gabor, Dennis, 1900–1979, Hungarian-born British physicist, Ph.D. Berlin Institute of Technology 1927. Gabor was a researcher with the Thomson-Houston Company, England, from 1934 to 1949 and a profe...

Curl, Robert Floyd, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Curl, Robert Floyd, Jr., 1933–, American chemist, b. Alice, Tex., Ph.D. Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1957. Curl has been a professor at Rice Univ. in Houston, Tex., since 1958. In 1996 he was awar...

Lamar, Mirabeau Buonaparte

(Encyclopedia)Lamar, Mirabeau Buonaparte mĭrˈəbōˌ bōˈnəpärtˌ [key], 1798–1859, president of the Texas republic (1838–41), b. Warren co., Ga. He went to Texas (1835), joined the revolutionaries, and to...

Howard, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Howard, Richard (Richard Joseph Howard), 1929–, American poet, translator, and essayist, b. Cleveland, studied Columbia (B.A. 1951), the Sorbonne, Paris. Beginning with Quantities (1962), he has wri...

Howe, Gordie

(Encyclopedia)Howe, Gordie (Gordon Howe), 1928–2016, Canadian hockey player. One of the great forwards in the game's history, “Mr. Hockey” was renowned for both his offensive and defensive play as well as for...

Johnson, Randy

(Encyclopedia)Johnson, Randy (Randall David Johnson), 1963–, American baseball player, b. Walnut Creek, Calif. After pitching for the Univ. of Southern California, Johnson signed with the Montreal Expos in 1985, ...