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The magnitude 5.8 earthquake that shook central Virginia on Tuesday afternoon is one of the biggest earthquakes to hit the East Coast since 1897, and was comparable in strength to a quake on the New York-Canadian border in 1944, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The U.S. Geological Survey reports an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.9 centered in northern Virginia that has been felt here in New York City, including on Columbia’s campuses.

Special from The Record 

For years, Iranian studies scholar Ehsan Yarshater was frustrated that there was only one comprehensive and reliable reference for his field. It was E.J. Brill’s Encyclopaedia of Islam, which did not cover pre-Islamic Iran.

Another encyclopedia was needed, so he decided to create it himself. In 1974, Yarshater began a decades-long work-in-progress that is widely considered the most important scholarly contribution to Iranian studies. And it’s only half complete.

“I thought that Persian history and culture needed to be known by the scholars and the students and the whole world properly, impartially and accurately,” says Yarshater, the 91-year-old director of Columbia’s Center for Iranian Studies, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies and the general editor of both theEncyclopaedia Iranica and the History of Persian Literature.

The Encyclopaedia Iranica aims to document all aspects of the Iranian world from prehistory to the present. Entries range from archaeology and agriculture to political science and botany. Geographic coverage includes all Iranian civilization in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

But the very scale of the project is one of its greatest challenges. After 37 years of work and contributions from 1,400 of the world’s foremost Iranian scholars, the encyclopedia this year is only halfway through the letter K. With about 800 scattered entries later in the alphabet completed, the encyclopedia has at least another decade to go. All entries are available for free online.

Yarshater works 11-hour days at the Center for Iranian Studies, which he founded in 1968. Sitting in his Riverside Drive office crowded with towering bookcases and Persian art, he explains why the work is so time-consuming. Contributors write in various languages, and between research, translation, editing and fact-checking, an entry can take up to two years for completion.

ored or edited such seminal works as Persian Poetry in the Second Half of the 15th Century (1953) and the third volume of the Cambridge History of Iran, in two parts (1983, 1986). But he says the encyclopedia stands out from all the rest.

“In terms of its service to Iranian studies and in terms of its use and its benefits, it’s the best thing that I have done,” says Yarshater, a widower who considers the encyclopedia and other projects his children.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has supported the project for more than 30 years. NEH reviewers, experts in the field who anonymously evaluate a project for funding, have called Encyclopaedia Iranica the “best impartial, non-governmental, and academically rigorous source” in the study of Iran.

The NEH grants were especially useful after the Iranian government, once a financial supporter of the project, cut off funding after the 1979 revolution. “I approached the chairman of the national endowment … to ask for support, even though it was during the hostage crisis, as I believed that scholarly projects should not be taken hostage for political considerations,” Yarshater says.

The reference tool is useful to scholars at all levels, says Professor Touraj Daryaee of the University of California, Irvine, who teaches the history of pre-Islamic Iran. He uses it himself, and it’s the first place he sends his students.

“There are about 100 or more encyclopedias being written or in progress on Iran right now, but I don’t think anything is really of the importance and scope of Encyclopaedia Iranica,” he says.

Like many of the leaders in the field, Daryaee has contributed a few entries himself.

Even the most esoteric subjects get the full treatment. One example is animal branding, or dagh. Without any scholarship to rely on, Encyclopaedia Iranica had to do its own fieldwork. “I asked a friend in Iran, and he sent someone to southeastern Persia where there are lots of camels to find out about how they are branded,” says Yarshater.

Once the first edition is complete, the work will continue. Entries written in the 1970s will need updating, and new ones will be needed to keep pace with historical developments and recent research.

“That is why I have set up a foundation to support the project after me,” says Yarshater.

—by Anna Spinner

Researchers returning from a cruise some 250 miles off the coast of Oregon have reported seeing a volcanic eruption on the seafloor that they accurately forecast five years ago—the first successful prediction of an undersea eruption. T

A new study co-authored by Columbia Engineering professor Kartik Chandran and recently published in the journal, Environmental Science & Technology, shows that reducing nitrogen pollution generated by wastewater treatment plants can come with "sizable" economic benefits, as well as the expected benefits for the environment.

Researchers at Columbia Engineering School have demonstrated that light can travel on an artificial material without leaving a trace under certain conditions, technology that would have many applications from the military to telecommunications.

John F. Szwed, professor of music and jazz studies at Columbia University, has been appointed director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia.

The rise of Internet search engines like Google has changed the way our brain remembers information, according to research by Columbia University psychologist Betsy Sparrow published July 14 in Science.

After the recent great quakes that have swept away entire coastlines and cities in Japan, Haiti and Sumatra, scientists are now looking hard at the nation that may suffer the gravest threat of all: Bangladesh

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger announced the appointment of Miller Theatre director Melissa Smey as executive director of Columbia’s Arts Initiative, effective immediately.

On June 23, Low Library was transformed into a lively dance studio for Columbia’s fifth annual “Shall We Dance?”, sponsored by the Office of Government and Community Affairs, the School of Continuing Education-Summer High School Program and the University’s Arts Initiative.

A team of researchers led by Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic has developed a new technique to evaluate human stem cells using cell micropatterning — a simple but powerful in vitro tool that will enable scientists to study the initiation of left-right asymmetry during tissue formation, to diagnose disease, and to study factors that could lead to certain birth defects.

Sixty years ago, when neurology department professor Harry Grundfest was doing groundbreaking research at the College of Physicians and Surgeons that attracted the likes of future Nobel laureate Eric Kandel to Columbia, he designed a workspace at the medical center that was intended to promote maximum contact among his postdoctoral students.

Dear Alma,

Columbia is big in interdisciplinary neuroscience, including two Nobel laureates, but who came before them?

—Neuro Fan