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5878db8b147b6d8fce15a6214bfd835c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walerian-Borowczyk | Walerian Borowczyk | Walerian Borowczyk
…efforts of Jan Lenica and Walerian Borowczyk foresaw the bleak themes and absurdist trends of the Polish school of the 1960s; such films as Był sobie raz… (1957; Once Upon a Time…), Nagrodzone uczucie (1957; Love Rewarded), and Dom (1958; The House) are surreal, pessimistic, plotless, and characterized by a…
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5bd2b1ec32123111cb766d46c27a3730 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wallace-Edward-Rowling | Sir Wallace Edward Rowling | Sir Wallace Edward Rowling
Sir Wallace Edward Rowling, byname Bill Rowling, (born Nov. 15, 1927, Motueka, N.Z.—died Oct. 31, 1995, Nelson), educator and politician who upon the death of Prime Minister Norman Kirk was elected premier of New Zealand (1974–75).
Rowling was a lecturer in economics when he entered politics; he became a member of Parliament (1962) and president of the Labour Party (1970–72). He was minister of finance (1972) when he was chosen by the party to succeed the late prime minister. His government’s effort to retrieve the economy ended with an upset victory by the National Party in 1975. Rowling continued to lead the Labour Party but lost two more general elections. Upon retiring from the party’s leadership in 1983, he was knighted. He served as ambassador to the United States from 1985 to 1988.
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559a6b2f129e3d24d62bc2a677fb914d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wallace-Shawn | Wallace Shawn | Wallace Shawn
Wallace Shawn, (born November 12, 1943, New York, New York, U.S.), American playwright and character actor whose oft-surreal probing plays found favour in the British theatre and led some to call him the leading contemporary dramatist in the United States.
Shawn was exposed to New York City’s literary culture from a young age, as his father, William Shawn, was the editor of The New Yorker from 1952 to 1987. He studied history at Harvard University and then philosophy and economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, before turning to playwriting after returning to New York. His first produced work was Our Late Night, which premiered in 1975 and won an Obie Award for playwriting. Shawn’s A Thought in Three Parts—featuring a prolonged simulated orgy in the second act—was met with parliamentary protests when it debuted in London in 1977 and was subsequently pulled from the theatre, which helped forge his reputation as a risk-taking playwright. In 1979 he made his on-screen acting debut with a small role in director Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and his “second career” soon led to his first brush with international fame.
Shawn and fellow actor-writer André Gregory starred in the film My Dinner with André (1981), which was an art-house sensation upon its release and became a cult classic in later years. The movie re-created a real-life dinner between the two principals, and the plot simply consisted of a long, meandering philosophical conversation, unusual subject matter for a modest box-office hit. Shawn went on to have memorable roles in four more Allen movies and in such films as The Princess Bride (1987), Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), and Clueless (1995). In 2013 Shawn wrote and starred in A Master Builder, the film adaptation of Henrick Ibsen’s play of the same name (1892). He then appeared in the movies Admission (2013), Maggie’s Plan (2015), The Only Living Boy in New York (2017), and Book Club (2018).
Throughout his career, Shawn acted on television as well, including a recurring role on the 1996–97 Clueless spin-off. He assumed guest roles on numerous shows, notably Murphy Brown in 1994–97, Sex and the City in 2004, The Good Wife in 2013–15, and Mozart in the Jungle in 2014–18.
Shawn’s distinctive voice also lent itself well to a number of family movies, including four Toy Story films (1995, 1999, 2010, and 2019), The Incredibles (2004), Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (2010), and Penguin Monster Beach Party (2015) and its sequels.
Meanwhile, Shawn produced highly lauded dramas. Aunt Dan and Lemon (1985) won him a second Obie Award, and he took a third in 1991 for The Fever, a caustic 90-minute monologue that dissects the power relations between the world’s poor and elite classes and finds a pervasive moral deficiency in the latter. The Designated Mourner (1996; film 1997) touched on similar ground, telling the story—through actionless narrations by the three characters—of educated and privileged people who grapple with their humanity during a chaotic civil war in an unnamed country.
In 2009 London’s Royal Court Theatre staged a three-month festival of Shawn’s work, including the premiere of his first new play in more than 10 years, Grasses of a Thousand Colors. He subsequently debuted his play Evening at the Talk House in London in 2015.
In addition to acting and playwriting, Shawn published the nonfiction collections Essays (2009) and Night Thoughts (2017).
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06b7efbcefa9385d143b1a36ac51d6f4 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wally-Westmore | Wally Westmore | Wally Westmore
Walter James Westmore (1906–73), known as “Wally,” headed the makeup department at Paramount Studios for 41 years (1926–67). Hamilton Adolph Westmore (1918–73), known as “Bud,” worked at Paramount and 20th Century-Fox and then was makeup chief at Universal Studios for almost 24 years (1946–70). Frank…
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5c6daf2a7a0671ff091e2c5cf5f882a8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walt-Whitman/Later-life | Later life | Later life
The fourth edition of Leaves of Grass, published in 1867, contained much revision and rearrangement. Apart from the poems collected in Drum-Taps, it contained eight new poems, and some poems had been omitted. In the late 1860s Whitman’s work began to receive greater recognition. O’Connor’s The Good Gray Poet and John Burroughs’s Notes on Walt Whitman as Poet and Person (1867) were followed in 1868 by an expurgated English edition of Whitman’s poems prepared by William Michael Rossetti, the English man of letters. During the remainder of his life Whitman received much encouragement from leading writers in England.
Whitman was ill in 1872, probably as a result of long-experienced emotional strains; in January 1873 his first stroke left him partly paralyzed. By May he had recovered sufficiently to travel to his brother’s home in Camden, New Jersey, where his mother was dying. Her subsequent death he called “the great cloud” of his life. He thereafter lived with his brother in Camden, and his post in the attorney general’s office was terminated in 1874.
Whitman’s health recovered sufficiently by 1879 for him to make a visit to the West. In 1881 James R. Osgood published a second Boston edition of Leaves of Grass, and the Society for the Suppression of Vice claimed it to be immoral. Because of a threatened prosecution, Osgood gave the plates to Whitman, who, after he had published an author’s edition, found a new publisher, Rees Welsh of Philadelphia, who was shortly succeeded by David McKay. Leaves of Grass had now reached the form in which it was henceforth to be published. Newspaper publicity had created interest in the book, and it sold better than any previous edition. As a result, Whitman was able to buy a modest little cottage in Camden, where he spent the rest of his life. He had many new friends, among them Horace Traubel, who recorded his talk and wrote his biography. The Complete Poems and Prose was published in 1888, along with the eighth edition of Leaves of Grass. The ninth, or “authorized,” edition appeared in 1892, the year of Whitman’s death.
Walt Whitman is known primarily for Leaves of Grass, though it is actually more than one book. During Whitman’s lifetime it went through nine editions, each with its own distinct virtues and faults. Whitman compared the finished book to a cathedral long under construction, and on another occasion to a tree, with its cumulative rings of growth. Both metaphors are misleading, however, because he did not construct his book unit by unit or by successive layers but constantly altered titles, diction, and even motifs and shifted poems—omitting, adding, separating, and combining. Beginning with the third edition (1860), he grouped the poems under such titles as “Chants Democratic,” “Enfans d’Adam” (later “Children of Adam”), “Calamus,” “Poems of Joy,” and “Sea-Drift.” Some of his later group titles were highly connotative, such as “Birds of Passage,” “By the Roadside,” “Autumn Rivulets,” “From Noon to Starry Night,” and “Songs of Parting,” suggesting a life allegory. But the poems were not arranged in order of composition, either within a particular group or from one group to another. After 1881 Whitman made no further shifts in groups or revisions of poems within the groups, merely adding the poems of “Sands at Seventy” and “Good-Bye My Fancy.”
Under the influence of the Romantic movement in literature and art, Whitman held the theory that the chief function of the poet was to express his own personality in his verse. The first edition of Leaves of Grass also appeared during the most nationalistic period in American literature, when critics were calling for a literature commensurate with the size, natural resources, and potentialities of the North American continent. “We want” shouted a character in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Kavanagh (1849), “a national literature altogether shaggy and unshorn, that shall shake the earth, like a herd of buffaloes thundering over the prairies.” With the same fervour, Whitman declared in his 1855 preface, “Here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves.” In Leaves of Grass he addressed the citizens of the United States, urging them to be large and generous in spirit, a new race nurtured in political liberty, and possessed of united souls and bodies.
It was partly in response to nationalistic ideals and partly in accord with his ambition to cultivate and express his own personality that the “I” of Whitman’s poems asserted a mythical strength and vitality. For the frontispiece to the first edition, Whitman used a picture of himself in work clothes, posed nonchalantly with cocked hat and hand in trouser pocket, as if illustrating a line in his leading poem, “Song of Myself”: “I cock my hat as I please indoors and out.” In this same poem he also characterized himself as:
From this time on throughout his life Whitman attempted to dress the part and act the role of the shaggy, untamed poetic spokesman of the proud young nation. For the expression of this persona he also created a form of free verse without rhyme or metre, but abounding in oratorical rhythms and chanted lists of American place-names and objects. He learned to handle this simple, enumerative style with great subtlety and was especially successful in creating empathy of space and movement, but to most of his contemporaries it seemed completely “unpoetic.” Both the content and the style of his verse also caused Whitman’s early biographers, and even the poet himself, to confuse the symbolic self of the poems with their physical creator. In reality Whitman was quiet, gentle, courteous; neither “rowdy” (a favourite word) nor lawless. In sexual conduct he may have been unconventional, though no one is sure; it is likely that the six illegitimate children he boasted of in extreme old age were begotten by his imagination. He did advocate greater sexual freedom and tolerance, but sex in his poems is also symbolic—of natural innocence, “the procreant urge of the world,” and of the regenerative power of nature. In his greatest poems, such as parts of “Song of Myself” and all of “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” sex is spiritualized.
Whitman’s greatest theme is a symbolic identification of the regenerative power of nature with the deathless divinity of the soul. His poems are filled with a religious faith in the processes of life, particularly those of fertility, sex, and the “unflagging pregnancy” of nature: sprouting grass, mating birds, phallic vegetation, the maternal ocean, and planets in formation (“the journey-work of stars”). The poetic “I” of Leaves of Grass transcends time and space, binding the past with the present and intuiting the future, illustrating Whitman’s belief that poetry is a form of knowledge, the supreme wisdom of humankind.
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26fd839e257cd1290645c11d623ee55e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walt-Whitman/Reputation | Reputation | Reputation
At the time of his death Whitman was more respected in Europe than in his own country. It was not as a poet, indeed, but as a symbol of American democracy that he first won recognition. In the late 19th century his poems exercised a strong fascination on English readers who found his championing of the common man idealistic and prophetic.
Whitman’s aim was to transcend traditional epics, to eschew normal aesthetic form, and yet by reflecting American society to enable the poet and his readers to realize themselves and the nature of their American experience. He has continued to hold the attention of very different generations because he offered the welcome conviction that “the crowning growth of the United States” was to be spiritual and heroic and because he was able to uncompromisingly express his own personality in poetic form. Modern readers can still share his preoccupation with the problem of preserving the individual’s integrity amid broader social pressures. Whitman invigorated language, he could be strong yet sentimental, and he possessed scope and inventiveness. He portrayed the relationships of an individual’s body and soul and the universe in a new way, often emancipating poetry from contemporary conventions. He had sufficient universality to be considered one of the greatest American poets.
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cb0326e6292447b52c5ef24c8b429bde | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Abish | Walter Abish | Walter Abish
Walter Abish, (born December 24, 1931, Vienna, Austria), Austrian-born American writer of experimental novels and short stories whose fiction takes as its subject language itself.
Abish spent his childhood in Shanghai, where his family were refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe. In 1949 they moved to Israel, where Abish served in the army and developed strong interests in architecture and writing. He immigrated to the United States in 1957 and became a citizen in 1960. From 1975 Abish taught English at several eastern colleges and universities and was a guest professor at Yale University and at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
In Alphabetical Africa (1974), the first of the 52 chapters (twice 26) consists solely of words beginning with “A,” the second chapter adds words beginning with “B,” and so forth through the alphabet and back again. His next book, Minds Meet (1975), contains short stories in which language is used symbolically rather than to relay specific information, and the experimental stories of In the Future Perfect (1977) juxtapose words in unusual patterns. How German Is It/Wie Deutsch ist es (1980), often considered Abish’s best work, is a multilayered novel about postwar Germany and its past. Other works by Abish include Duel Site (1970), a collection of poems; 99: The New Meaning (1990), a group of narratives; and the novel Eclipse Fever (1993). Double Vision, a memoir, was published in 2004.
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743cc53b6668594fb1106950a45610fd | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Alston | Walter Alston | Walter Alston
Walter Alston, in full Walter Emmons Alston, byname Smokey, (born December 1, 1911, Venice, Ohio, U.S.—died October 1, 1984, Oxford, Ohio), professional National League baseball manager whose career with the Los Angeles (formerly Brooklyn) Dodgers was the third longest for managers, after Connie Mack and John McGraw.
Alston earned his nickname Smokey as a pitcher for his high-school team. At Miami University (Oxford, Ohio), he was a hard-hitting infielder. He was signed to a contract by the St. Louis Cardinals as a shortstop and played on their minor league teams (1935–40). He played just one game in the majors, striking out in his only at bat. He began managing in the minor leagues (1940–42) and in 1944 moved to the Dodgers’ organization as a minor league player-manager (1944–47) and manager thereafter until 1953, when he became the manager of their major league team. As minor league manager he developed Dodger talent such as Don Newcombe, Roy Campanella, Carl Erskine, and Junior Gilliam; thus, by the time he was moved to the majors, he had managed every player on his first 25-man roster. As a Dodgers manager he won seven pennants and four of the seven subsequent World Series. The 1955 World Series victory was the Dodgers’ first.
Alston retired after the 1976 season. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983.
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b454d52dd35d07f81e98a9733f9e376f | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Alvarez | Walter Alvarez | Walter Alvarez
…helped his son, the geologist Walter Alvarez, publicize Walter’s discovery of a worldwide layer of clay that has a high iridium content and which occupies rock strata at the geochronological boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras (i.e., about 65.5 million years ago). They postulated that the iridium had been…
…theory” formulated by American scientists Walter Alvarez and Luis Alvarez. This theory states that a bolide (meteorite or comet) impact may have triggered the extinction event by ejecting a huge quantity of rock debris into the atmosphere, enshrouding Earth in darkness for several months or longer. With no sunlight able…
…forward by the American geologist Walter Alvarez, his father, physicist Luis Alvarez, and their coworkers. This theory is consistent with the timing and magnitude of some extinctions, especially in the oceans, but it does not fully explain the patterns on land and does not eliminate the possibility that other factors…
… theory formulated by American scientists Walter and Luis Alvarez. This theory states that the impact of an asteroid on Earth may have triggered the extinction event by ejecting a huge quantity of rock debris into the atmosphere, enshrouding Earth in darkness for several months or longer. With no sunlight able…
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37fb0ca8937116b376069b27f498ec08 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Baader | Walter Baader | Walter Baader
In 1934, in collaboration with Walter Baade, he proposed that supernovas are a class of stellar explosion completely different from the ordinary novas and occur less often (two or three times every 1,000 years in the Milky Way Galaxy). Zwicky began conducting an extensive search of neighbouring galaxies for supernovas,…
…1949, by German-born American astronomer Walter Baade of the Hale Observatories (now Palomar Observatory), California. At the time of its discovery, Icarus had a more-eccentric orbit than any other known body in the solar system except for some comets. Its orbit extends from beyond Mars to within that of Mercury;…
…1950s by the German-born astronomer Walter Baade. The members of these stellar populations differ from each other in various ways, most notably in age, chemical composition, and location within galactic systems.
In 1944 the German-born astronomer Walter Baade announced the successful resolution into stars of the centre of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31, and its two elliptical companions, M32 and NGC 205. He found that the central parts of Andromeda and the accompanying galaxies were resolved at very much fainter magnitudes than…
…1944 did the German-born astronomer Walter Baade finally resolve the bulge of M31. Using red-sensitive plates and very long exposures, he managed to detect the brightest red giants of this old population. Out in the arms there exist many young, bright, hot blue stars, and these are easily resolved. The…
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24a833e3e2572b4d29ebb1f0250243e7 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Bedell-Smith | Walter Bedell Smith | Walter Bedell Smith
Walter Bedell Smith, (born October 5, 1895, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.—died August 9, 1961, Washington, D.C.), U.S. Army general, diplomat, and administrator who served as chief of staff for U.S. forces in Europe during World War II.
Smith began his military career as an enlisted man in the Indiana National Guard (1910–15) and in 1917 was commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry in the U.S. Army. He fought briefly in World War I, and, advancing through grades, he served in the United States and the Philippines and taught in the U.S. Army Infantry School, Fort Benning, Georgia. In February 1942 he was named secretary of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and U.S. secretary of the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff, with the rank of brigadier general. The following September he became chief of staff of the European theatre of operations and chief of staff to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, serving in those posts until Eisenhower’s departure from Europe after the war. He negotiated and accepted for the Allies the surrender of Italy (1943) and of Germany (1945).
On returning to the United States in 1945, Smith became chief of the operations and planning division of the War Department general staff. Shortly afterward he was appointed U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, a post he held from 1946 to 1949. Later he commanded the U.S. First Army (1949–50) and was director of central intelligence (1950–53), becoming general in 1951. He retired from the army in 1953 to become undersecretary of state. In October 1954 he resigned from government service and entered private business. He was the author of My Three Years in Moscow (1950) and Eisenhower’s Six Great Decisions (1956).
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b5ed3f364e5f04f626d8ae63b93f7fac | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Benjamin | Walter Benjamin | Walter Benjamin
Walter Benjamin, (born July 15, 1892, Berlin, Ger.—died Sept. 27?, 1940, near Port-Bou, Spain), man of letters and aesthetician, now considered to have been the most important German literary critic in the first half of the 20th century.
Born into a prosperous Jewish family, Benjamin studied philosophy in Berlin, Freiburg im Breisgau, Munich, and Bern. He settled in Berlin in 1920 and worked thereafter as a literary critic and translator. His halfhearted pursuit of an academic career was cut short when the University of Frankfurt rejected his brilliant but unconventional doctoral thesis, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928; The Origin of German Tragic Drama). Benjamin eventually settled in Paris after leaving Germany in 1933 upon the Nazis’ rise to power. He continued to write essays and reviews for literary journals, but upon the fall of France to the Germans in 1940 he fled southward with the hope of escaping to the United States via Spain. Informed by the chief of police at the town of Port-Bou on the Franco-Spanish border that he would be turned over to the Gestapo, Benjamin committed suicide.
The posthumous publication of Benjamin’s prolific output significantly increased his reputation in the later 20th century. The essays containing his philosophical reflections on literature are written in a dense and concentrated style that contains a strong poetic strain. He mixes social criticism and linguistic analysis with historical nostalgia while communicating an underlying sense of pathos and pessimism. The metaphysical quality of his early critical thought gave way to a Marxist inclination in the 1930s. Benjamin’s pronounced intellectual independence and originality are evident in the extended essay Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften (1924–25; “Goethe’s Elective Affinities”) and in the essays posthumously collected in Illuminationen (1961; Illuminations), including “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit” (1936; “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”).
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451e3f644f2141a4e0eb0d434a6ce382 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Bradford-Cannon | Walter Bradford Cannon | Walter Bradford Cannon
Walter Bradford Cannon, (born Oct. 19, 1871, Prairie du Chien, Wis., U.S.—died Oct. 1, 1945, Franklin, N.H.), American neurologist and physiologist who was the first to use X rays in physiological studies. These led to his publication of The Mechanical Factors of Digestion (1911). His investigations on hemorrhagic and traumatic shock during World War I were summarized in Traumatic Shock (1923). He worked on methods of blood storage and in 1931 discovered sympathin, an adrenaline-like substance that is liberated at the tips of certain nerve cells.
Cannon’s work on the emergency functions of the sympathetic nervous system and on homeostasis are reported in Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage (1915) and in The Wisdom of the Body (1932). His contributions to the knowledge of the chemical mediation of nerve impulses were published (with A. Rosenblueth) in Autonomic Neuro-effector Systems (1937) and The Supersensitivity of Denervated Structures (1949). He was graduated in medicine from Harvard (1900) and taught there from 1899 to 1942.
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f1e8e0717807f24fe4b483f737d7bb7e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Bryan-Emery | Walter Bryan Emery | Walter Bryan Emery
In the 1930s Walter Bryan Emery began the excavations that uncovered the great 1st-dynasty tombs. His work in the archaic cemetery disclosed another huge labyrinth, resembling that of the Serapeum, the precise function of which is as yet undetermined. Beginning in the 1980s, the Egypt Exploration Society sponsored…
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32eaf189bfabed0921b326e3e7ad7af9 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Burkert | Walter Burkert | Walter Burkert
…the German historian of religion Walter Burkert. Burkert detected certain recurrent patterns in the actions described in Greek myths, and he related these patterns (and their counterparts in Greek ritual) to basic biologic or cultural “programs of action.” An example of this relation is given in Burkert’s Structure and History…
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54b47a8c969f8571ece1f43a1af9d09c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Burley-Griffin | Walter Burley Griffin | Walter Burley Griffin
Walter Burley Griffin, (born Nov. 24, 1876, Maywood, Ill., U.S.—died Feb. 13, 1937, Lucknow, India), American architect, landscape designer, and city planner whose most ambitious work is the Australian capital, Canberra.
After studying at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Griffin worked in Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural studio at Oak Park, Ill., in the first decade of the 20th century. There he met the architect-renderer Marion Mahony, whom he married in 1911 and who took an active part in his practice. Among his early independent commissions were the William H. Emery House, Elmhurst, Ill. (1902), influenced by Wright’s Prairie houses, and the landscaping of the campus of Northern Illinois State Teachers’ College (afterward University), DeKalb (1906). He laid out the Rock Glen residential development, Mason City, Iowa (1910–16), and designed several of its houses.
Early in 1912 Griffin won an international competition to plan Canberra, the new federal capital of Australia, and he spent most of the rest of his life in that country. Starting with the “Garden City” ideal of strict separation of functions within a community, he adopted a geometric formalism. The main streets of the city were to radiate from focuses—the houses of Parliament, a municipal centre, and a commercial district. From 1915 Griffin was in charge of construction, but in 1920, following a dispute with Prime Minister William Morris Hughes, he lost control of the project. Other works by Griffin in Australia include Newman College, University of Melbourne (1915), and the Castlecrag residential community, Sydney (1918).
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60aff5f8b0d7ca720ecff8e7805e1936 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Damrosch | Walter Damrosch | Walter Damrosch
Walter Damrosch, in full Walter Johannes Damrosch, (born Jan. 30, 1862, Breslau, Prussia [now Wrocław, Pol.]—died Dec. 22, 1950, New York, N.Y., U.S.), Prussian-born American orchestral conductor and composer whose activities spanned more than half a century of American musical life.
Damrosch studied with his father, Leopold Damrosch (1832–85), German violinist and conductor, who settled in New York City in 1871. Upon his father’s death in 1885, Walter Damrosch assumed the conductorship of the New York Symphony Society and the Oratorio Society of New York, founded by his father, and also conducted at the Metropolitan Opera Company (from 1885 to 1891). In 1898 his brother Frank Damrosch (1853–1937) took over as conductor of the Oratorio Society of New York. Later, Walter Damrosch organized the Damrosch Opera Company (1894–1900), specializing in German operas. In 1903 he reorganized the New York Symphony Society and conducted it until 1927, when it was combined with the Philharmonic Society.
Like his father, Damrosch was an avowed propagandist of the Romantic composer Richard Wagner; as early as March 3, 1886, he gave a concert performance of the opera Parsifal (first performed 1862) in New York. He also presented first American performances of symphonies by Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Although not in sympathy with new music, he introduced several works by contemporary European and American composers. He was a pioneer of symphonic broadcasting and also established a weekly series of radio lectures on music appreciation for schools, which aired from 1928 to 1942.
A competent composer, Damrosch wrote several operas that were performed in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, including The Scarlet Letter (1896), Cyrano de Bergerac (1913), The Man Without a Country (1937), and The Opera Cloak (1942). He also composed incidental music to plays and published an autobiography, My Musical Life (1923; 2nd ed., 1930).
Walter Damrosch’s brother Frank was a founder and dean of the Juilliard School of Music.
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e5be59d052d19b2312f938f9420353c8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-de-la-Mare | Walter de la Mare | Walter de la Mare
Walter de la Mare, in full Walter John de la Mare, (born April 25, 1873, Charlton, Kent, England—died June 22, 1956, Twickenham, Middlesex), British poet and novelist with an unusual power to evoke the ghostly, evanescent moments in life.
De la Mare was educated at St. Paul’s Cathedral Choir School in London, and from 1890 to 1908 he worked in the London office of the Anglo-American Oil Company. From 1902, however, when his poetry collection Songs of Childhood appeared under the pseudonym Walter Ramal, he devoted himself increasingly to writing. His first novel, Henry Brocken, was published in 1904 and his Poems in 1906. As the years passed his books continued to appear: poems and short stories for adults and children; novels, of which Memoirs of a Midget (1921) reached the greatest poetic fantasy; a fairy play, Crossings (1921); and essays and literary studies. His anthology Come Hither (1923) is often held to be one of the best and most original in the language. He was made a Companion of Honour in 1948 and received the Order of Merit in 1953.
Among de la Mare’s other works for children are Bells and Grass (1941); Collected Rhymes and Verses (1944); and Collected Stories for Children (1947). Later poetry for adults includes The Burning Glass (1945), The Traveller (1946), Inward Companion (1950), and O Lovely England (1953).
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2a74250fa907c2020cd177e89301690d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Dorwin-Teague | Walter Dorwin Teague | Walter Dorwin Teague
Walter Dorwin Teague, (born Dec. 18, 1883, Decatur, Ind., U.S.—died Dec. 5, 1960, Flemington, N.J.), industrial designer who pioneered in the establishment of industrial design as a profession in the United States.
After study at the Art Students League of New York (1903–07) and four years with an advertising agency, Teague became a successful free-lance advertising designer. Increasingly, his clients sought his advice for product design, and in 1926 he formed an office devoted exclusively to industrial design, including products, exhibits, corporate graphics, and interiors. An important opportunity came in 1927, when the Eastman Kodak Company asked Teague to redesign two of their cameras. He insisted on working closely with engineers in the Eastman factory; the results were successful, and the firm remained a client until his death.
In 1930 Teague’s revolutionary design for the Marmon 16 automobile attracted widespread attention. Late in the decade he designed a number of exhibits for the New York World’s Fair and the Golden Gate (San Francisco) International Exposition (both in 1939–40). Other notable designs were for railway coaches, office machines, and automotive service stations. In the 1950s he designed interiors and furnishings for the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colo., and the interiors of the Boeing 707 jet airliner. At the time of his death he was senior partner of Walter Dorwin Teague Associates.
His Design This Day—the Technique of Order in the Machine Age (1940; rev. ed. 1949) traces the development of modern design and outlines the techniques necessary to the solution of design problems. He also wrote Land of Plenty, a Summary of Possibilities (1947) and, with John Storck, Flour for Man’s Bread, a History of Milling (1952).
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3f319a9d06277284433dabb486ce1d58 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-E-Fernald | Walter E. Fernald | Walter E. Fernald
Walter E. Fernald, in full Walter Elmore Fernald, (born 1859, Kittery, Maine, U.S.—died November 26, 1924, Waverley, Massachusetts), American doctor and administrator who was known for his work with the intellectually disabled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
After graduating from the Medical School of Maine in 1881, Fernald worked (1882–87) at a hospital in Wisconsin. In 1887 he became superintendent of the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded (later known as the Walter E. Fernald Development Center) in Waltham. The institution, which had been founded by Samuel Gridley Howe in 1848, was the first public asylum in the United States specifically created to house intellectually disabled people. There Fernald became a prominent supporter of institutionalizing people with intellectual disabilities. For many years, he wrote about what he called “the burden of the feeble-minded” on the rest of society, and, although he advocated for the humane care of the intellectually disabled, he was an active proponent of involuntary sterilization, at the same time that eugenics laws were being passed by state legislatures throughout the country.
Fernald changed some of his views before the end of his life. He became a supporter of community placement for many of those he previously characterized as part of “a parasitic, predatory class,” eventually moving many institutional residents into smaller, community-based residences. He also came to reject forced sterilization.
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749cabedd05644021556e33fb787147b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Greenwood | Walter Greenwood | Walter Greenwood
Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole (1933) is a bleak record, in the manner of Bennett, of the economic depression in a northern working-class community; and Graham Greene’s It’s a Battlefield (1934) and Brighton Rock (1938) are desolate studies, in the manner of Conrad, of…
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1a5c1196bfc891375d28e0a87e531b04 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Hampden | Walter Hampden | Walter Hampden
Walter Hampden, original name Walter Hampden Dougherty, (born June 30, 1879, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died June 11, 1955, Los Angeles, California), American actor, theatre manager, and repertory producer.
Hampden attended Harvard briefly but graduated from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. After a year’s study of singing, dancing, speech, and playing the cello in France, Hampden joined Sir Frank Benson’s company in England, where he played more than 70 classical roles in three years. In 1905 he married Mabel Moore, an actress in the troupe, and in 1906 he played Hamlet in London to great applause. After his return to the United States in 1907, he appeared in several modern dramas with Nazimova, but his Hamlet was so successful that when he formed his own repertory company that play became its foundation. In 1923 Hampden revived Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, a play still associated with his name. He opened his own theatre (1925) with Ethel Barrymore as his leading lady, and in the ensuing years he gave outstanding performances in Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice (1925–26), and An Enemy of the People (1927–28). Hampden appeared in his first motion picture, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1929), and later played the part of an aging actor in All About Eve (1950). He made his television debut as Macbeth in 1949. Hampden was the fourth president of the Players’ Club.
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d0b8de62a56b19e1169322b411d6327e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Lantz | Walter Lantz | Walter Lantz
Walter Lantz, (born April 27, 1899, New Rochelle, New York, U.S.—died March 22, 1994, Burbank, California), American motion-picture animator, cartoon producer, and creator of the cartoon character Woody Woodpecker.
At age 16, Lantz worked as a newspaper cartoonist and began experimenting with animation that same year. In 1922 he went to work for Bray Studios in New York City, where he collaborated on several series, among them The Katzenjammer Kids, Happy Hooligan, Mutt and Jeff, and Colonel Heeza Liar. He also created and worked on the Pete the Pup and Dinky Doodle series.
In 1927 Lantz went to California, where he found work as a gag writer for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. In the late 1920s he began working for Universal Studios; he continued their Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series and developed the characters Andy Panda, Li’l Eight Ball, and Winchester the Tortoise. About the same time, Lantz produced the first Technicolor cartoon sequence ever screened for the opening scenes of the feature King of Jazz (1930). His most famous creation was Woody Woodpecker, who first appeared in a bit part in the cartoon short Knock, Knock (1940) and who became the star of a long-running series of cartoons the following year. Lantz’s wife, Gracie, provided Woody’s voice, and renowned voice artist Mel Blanc originated Woody’s familiar “ha-ha-ha-HA-ha!” laugh.
During World War II Lantz produced cartoons that were used as training films by the army and navy. Subsequently he produced educational films, commercial pictures, and The Woody Woodpecker Show for television. The last independent producer of theatrically distributed cartoon shorts in the business, Lantz closed his operation in 1973. In 1979 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him with a special honorary award for his contributions to the art of animation. In a memorable television moment, an animated Woody appeared alongside Lantz to accept the award on the live Oscar broadcast.
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b2c480309586c03f75dc73686b13e6b2 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Layton | Sir Walter Layton | Sir Walter Layton
…socially and politically prominent editor Sir Walter Layton (1922–38) was influential in establishing the publication as an authority. By 1938 half The Economist’s sales were overseas. Layton’s successor, Geoffrey Crowther (1938–56), thus continued to expand its foreign affairs and business coverage. The magazine’s in-depth coverage of the Pearl Harbor attack…
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32219c4ea5229327022370d81c95f9d8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Lewis | Walter Lewis | Walter Lewis
…Cambridge University Press, whose printer, Walter Lewis, had begun a complete reform of its typographic resources. Cambridge stocked most of the types Morison commissioned for Monotype and demonstrated by their intelligent use that mechanical composition could be used to produce books at once handsome and functional. Among these types were…
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9d2f1f45507db388ee1a39a460f19079 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Lippmann | Walter Lippmann | Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann, (born Sept. 23, 1889, New York City—died Dec. 14, 1974, New York City), American newspaper commentator and author who in a 60-year career made himself one of the most widely respected political columnists in the world.
While studying at Harvard (B.A., 1909), Lippmann was influenced by the philosophers William James and George Santayana. He helped to found (1914) The New Republic and served as its assistant editor under Herbert David Croly. Through his writings in that liberal weekly and through direct consultation, he influenced Pres. Woodrow Wilson, who is said to have drawn on Lippmann’s ideas for the post-World War I settlement plan (Fourteen Points) and for the concept of the League of Nations. Lippmann was briefly (1917) an assistant to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Wilson sent him to take part in the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles (1919).
After writing editorials (1921–29) for the reformist World, Lippmann served as its editor (1929–31) and then moved to the New York Herald Tribune. On Sept. 8, 1931, his column, “Today and Tomorrow,” first appeared; eventually, it was syndicated in more than 250 newspapers in the United States and about 25 other nations and won two Pulitzer Prizes (1958, 1962). In preparing his commentaries, he traveled throughout the world. His first book, A Preface to Politics (1913), was mildly socialistic, but Drift and Mastery (1914) was anti-Marxist, and in The Good Society (1937) he repudiated socialism entirely. During World War II he warned against a postwar return of the United States to an isolationist policy. Essays in the Public Philosophy (1955) evoked some criticism for its natural-law theory.
In perhaps his most influential book, Public Opinion (1922; reissued 1956; paperback ed., 1965), Lippmann seemed to imply that ordinary citizens can no longer judge public issues rationally, since the speed and condensation required in the mass media tend to produce slogans rather than interpretations. In The Phantom Public (1925) he again treated the problem of communication in politics; while continuing to doubt the possibility of a true democracy, he nonetheless rejected government by an elite.
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5858ad92f1de8b7b5266e49908f5a294 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-M-Elsasser | Walter M. Elsasser | Walter M. Elsasser
Walter M. Elsasser, in full Walter Maurice Elsasser, (born March 20, 1904, Mannheim, Ger.—died Oct. 14, 1991, Baltimore, Md., U.S.), German-born American physicist notable for a variety of contributions to science.
Elsasser received the Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1927, then accepted teaching appointments at Frankfurt, Paris, and the California Institute of Technology. He became a U.S. citizen in 1940 and engaged in research for the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Radio Corporation of America before returning to academic life, holding successive positions at the universities of Pennsylvania, Utah, and California; the Scripps Institution of Oceanography; and Princeton, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins universities.
While Elsasser was a graduate student he correctly predicted that a beam of electrons would be diffracted by a crystalline material; after the neutron was discovered, he predicted the same behaviour for neutrons. Independently of Nobel Prize winner Hans Bethe, Elsasser carried out important work on the likelihood of certain interactions between neutrons and atomic nuclei.
Elsasser formulated what is called the dynamo model of the Earth’s structure to account for the origin and properties of its magnetic field. He suggested that convection within the core, driven by the energy of radioactive decay, generates electric currents that interact with concentric spherical shells of the Earth’s mantle, which are rotating at different speeds, and that the Coriolis effect produces eddies at the boundaries of these shells.
He also investigated the applicability of contemporary theoretical concepts of physics, especially quantum mechanics, to the biological sciences, presenting his views in The Physical Foundation of Biology (1958), Atom and Organism (1966), and The Chief Abstractions of Biology (1975).
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889180ea335039ac1b59d94a9318a255 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Mosley | Walter Mosley | Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley, (born January 12, 1952, Los Angeles, California, U.S.), American author of mystery stories noted for their realistic portrayals of segregated inner-city life.
Mosley attended Goddard College and Johnson State College, and he became a computer programmer before publishing his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990; film 1995). Set in 1948, the novel introduces Ezekiel (“Easy”) Rawlins, an unwilling amateur detective from the Watts section of Los Angeles. It presents period issues of race relations and mores as the unemployed Rawlins is hired to find a white woman who frequents jazz clubs in black districts.
In Devil in a Blue Dress and subsequent Rawlins novels, Mosley used period detail and slang to create authentic settings and characters, especially the earnest, complex protagonist, who is continually confronted with personal, social, and moral dilemmas. In A Red Death (1991), set during the McCarthy era, Rawlins is blackmailed by the FBI into spying on a labour union organizer. In White Butterfly (1992) the police call on Rawlins to help investigate the vicious murders of four young women—three black and one white. Other novels featuring Rawlins included Black Betty (1994) and A Little Yellow Dog (1996). For the publication of Gone Fishin’ (1997), a prequel to Devil in a Blue Dress, Mosley chose a small independent black publisher, Black Classic Press, over his longtime publisher W.W. Norton. The series continued with Bad Boy Brawly Brown (2002), Little Scarlet (2004), Cinnamon Kiss (2005), and Blonde Faith (2007). Rawlins, ostensibly dead following a car crash at the close of Blonde Faith, was revealed to have survived in Little Green (2013), in which he becomes involved in locating a young man who has disappeared after visiting the Sunset Strip. Later books in the series included Rose Gold (2014), Charcoal Joe (2016), and Blood Grove (2021).
Mosley’s other novels included RL’s Dream (1995), the story of a dying former blues guitarist (based on Robert Johnson) who is befriended by a young woman, and The Man in My Basement (2004), an examination of wealth, power, manipulation, and shifting relationships. Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (1997; filmed as Always Outnumbered for television, 1998), a collection of stories set in contemporary Watts, features the ex-convict Socrates Fortlow. Mosley returned to the Fortlow character in the stories of Walkin’ the Dog (1999) and in the novel The Right Mistake: The Further Philosophical Investigations of Socrates Fortlow (2008).
Mosley revisited the setting of 1950s Los Angeles in the mystery Fearless Jones (2001), introducing timorous bookseller Paris Minton and his roustabout sidekick, the titular Jones. Minton and Jones returned in sequels that included Fear Itself (2003) and Fear of the Dark (2006). The Tempest Tales (2008) centres on a dead man whose refusal to accept St. Peter’s judgment results in his being returned to earth. Mosley adapted the latter work into his first play, The Fall of Heaven, which was staged in 2010. The Long Fall (2009) was the first entry in another mystery series, set in contemporary New York City and featuring private detective (and sometime criminal) Leonid McGill. Mosley chronicled more of McGill’s hard-boiled capers in such works as Known to Evil (2010), All I Did Was Shoot My Man (2012), And Sometimes I Wonder About You (2015), and Trouble Is What I Do (2020). In Parishioner (2012), published as an e-book, Xavier (“Ecks”) Rule, a reformed criminal, is roped into solving a kidnapping that occurred nearly a quarter of a century before. Down the River unto the Sea (2018) centres on a New York City police investigator who tries to rebuild his life after being wrongly convicted of assault.
Mosley also tried his hand at other genres. He essayed science fiction in Blue Light (1998) and Futureland (2001), a group of interlocking stories, and in his Crosstown to Oblivion (2012, 2013) series of novellas. The Awkward Black Man (2020) is a collection of short stories. Nonfiction volumes included Workin’ on the Chain Gang: Shaking Off the Dead Hand of History (2000), What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace (2003), This Year You Write Your Novel (2007), and Twelve Steps Toward Political Revelation (2011).
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97fc88dd6fec0cd7338578c6beb91e0a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Pater | Walter Pater | Walter Pater
Walter Pater, in full Walter Horatio Pater, (born August 4, 1839, Shadwell, London, England—died July 30, 1894, Oxford, Oxfordshire), English critic, essayist, and humanist whose advocacy of “art for art’s sake” became a cardinal doctrine of the movement known as Aestheticism.
Pater was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he studied Greek philosophy under Benjamin Jowett. He then settled in Oxford and read with private pupils. In 1864 he was elected to a fellowship at Brasenose College. Pater’s early intention to enter the church gave way at this time to a consuming interest in classical studies. Pater then began to write for the reviews, and his essays on Leonardo da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Pico della Mirandola, Michelangelo, and others were collected in 1873 as Studies in the History of the Renaissance (later called simply The Renaissance). His delicate, fastidious style and sensitive appreciation of Renaissance art in these essays made his reputation as a scholar and an aesthete, and he became the centre of a small group of admirers in Oxford. In the concluding essay in The Renaissance, Pater asserted that art exists for the sake of its beauty alone, and that it acknowledges neither moral standards nor utilitarian functions in its reason for being. These views brought Pater into an association with Algernon Charles Swinburne and with the Pre-Raphaelites.
Marius the Epicurean (1885) is his most substantial work. It is a philosophical romance in which Pater’s ideal of an aesthetic and religious life is scrupulously and elaborately set forth. The setting is Rome in the time of Marcus Aurelius; but this is a thin disguise for the characteristically late-19th-century spiritual development of its main character. Imaginary Portraits (1887) are shorter pieces of philosophical fiction in the same mode. Appreciations (1889) is a return to the critical essay, this time largely on English subjects. In 1893 came Plato and Platonism, giving an extremely literary view of Plato and neglecting the logical and dialectical side of his philosophy. Pater’s Greek Studies (1895), Miscellaneous Studies (1895), and Essays from The Guardian (privately printed, 1896; 1901) were published posthumously. Also published posthumously was his unfinished romance, Gaston de Latour (1896).
The primary influence on Pater’s mind was his classical studies, coloured by a highly individual view of Christian devotion and pursued largely as a source of extremely refined artistic sensations. In his later critical writings Pater continued to focus on the innate qualities of works of art, in contrast to the prevailing tendency to evaluate them on the basis of their moral and educational value.
Pater’s early influence was confined to a small circle in Oxford, but he came to have a widespread effect on the next literary generation. Oscar Wilde, George Moore, and the aesthetes of the 1890s were among his followers and show obvious and continual traces both of his style and of his ideas.
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c14a2d63445121518db742f1d8008eaf | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Pitts | Walter Pitts | Walter Pitts
…of Illinois and the mathematician Walter Pitts of the University of Chicago published an influential treatise on neural networks and automatons, according to which each neuron in the brain is a simple digital processor and the brain as a whole is a form of computing machine. As McCulloch put it…
McCulloch and Walter Pitts at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology starting in the 1940s.
…the same capability as McCulloch-Pitts automata and accept sets called regular sets. The corresponding grammars in the classification being discussed are the finite-state grammars. In these systems the rules g → g′ are restricted so that g is a nonterminal v of VN (as exemplified above) and g′ is…
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be518970270139fd659b0c13f506c7c2 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Ray-Williams-Jr | Walter Ray Williams, Jr. | Walter Ray Williams, Jr.
Walter Ray Williams, Jr., (born October 6, 1959, San Jose, California, U.S.), American professional bowler who was the first person to earn more than $2 million, $3 million, and then $4 million in prize money from bowling. He was also a champion horseshoe pitcher.
Williams joined the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) tour in 1980 after graduating from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, where a paper he prepared for a senior science course was an analysis of the motion of a bowling ball during its roll toward the pins. He did not win his first PBA title (tournament) until 1986, when three tournament victories brought him his first of an unprecedented seven Player of the Year honours; he also won in 1993, 1996–98, 2003, and 2010. With his 42nd PBA title in 2006, Williams passed Earl Anthony for most career titles; he won his 47th title in 2010. That year he began competing on the PBA50 tour for senior players.
Williams twice served as president of the PBA (1995–96 and 2001–02). In 1995 he was inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame. He was one of the stars of the documentary A League of Ordinary Gentlemen (2004), which followed four professional bowlers on the PBA tour for one year.
Williams’s interest in horseshoes, which are delivered in an underhand manner somewhat similar to bowling, never lagged, even though it earned him only a few thousand dollars, compared with the millions he earned from bowling. He won the World Horseshoe Pitching Championship, sponsored by the National Horseshoe Pitchers Association of America, six times (1978, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1991, and 1994).
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f3889dcc6197033b15755689cd3861fd | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Reuther | Walter Reuther | Walter Reuther
Walter Reuther, in full Walter Philip Reuther, (born September 1, 1907, Wheeling, West Virginia, U.S.—died May 9, 1970, Pellston, Michigan), American labour leader who was president of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and was active in national and international affairs.
Reuther’s negotiating skills helped win numerous bargaining gains for the UAW. These included annual raises based on productivity advances, cost-of-living increases, supplementary unemployment benefits, early-retirement options, and health and welfare benefits.
As the son of a trade-union and socialist activist, Reuther became an apprentice tool and die maker in Wheeling at the age of 16 and, upon moving to Detroit, Michigan, at 19, became a tool and die craftsman. He was soon promoted to a foreman’s post and went on to complete high school and three years of college. In the 1930s Reuther and his brother Victor spent three years traveling around the world, working for almost two years in an automobile factory in the Soviet Union. The experience led him to condemn the lack of freedom in communist societies. He would go on to fight the communist elements in the UAW and the CIO.
While president of his local union on the west side of Detroit, Reuther helped lead the sit-down strikes that established the UAW as a force in the automobile industry. He became director of the General Motors Department of the UAW in 1939 and was president of the union from 1946 until his death. In 1952 Reuther succeeded Philip Murray as president of the CIO; in that position he became an architect of the AFL-CIO merger in 1955. Reuther, elected a vice president of the merged labour federation and president of its Industrial Union Department, held positions that made him second only to George Meany, president of the combined AFL-CIO. At the same time, Reuther served as vice president of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, a counterforce to the communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions.
Reuther’s relationship with Meany—whom he criticized for dictatorial control, conservatism, and inaction—had deteriorated by 1968, which prompted Reuther to withdraw the UAW from the federation he had helped create. The following year he launched the Alliance for Labor Action in cooperation with the Teamsters, a union that had been expelled from the AFL-CIO in 1957 on charges of corruption.
In 1970 Reuther and his wife were killed in a plane crash near Pellston, Michigan.
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ac4cf9837b771423e77b1466b6a76025 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Runciman-1st-Viscount-Runciman-of-Doxford | Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford | Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford
…to the mission of Lord Runciman, whose avowed purpose was to observe and report on conditions within the country.
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67315670c5c39efadaf5b0f2687e9671 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-Scott-Lenox | Walter Scott Lenox | Walter Scott Lenox
…in the late 19th century Walter Scott Lenox developed an international reputation with the fine china his firm made in Trenton. The railroad, trucking, rubber, plastics, metalworking, electrical, automobile parts, glass, and textile industries are now among the city’s foremost enterprises.
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416b899da5772228f931b1cfbad7d3c1 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walter-William-Rouse-Ball | Walter William Rouse Ball | Walter William Rouse Ball
The first edition of W.W. Rouse Ball’s Mathematical Recreations and Essays appeared in 1892; it soon became a classic, largely because of its scholarly approach. After passing through 10 editions it was revised by the British professor H.S.M. Coxeter in 1938; it is still a standard reference.
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839b3e16fe68815995f32957c0ccaddd | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walther-Bothe | Walther Bothe | Walther Bothe
Walther Bothe, in full Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe, (born Jan. 8, 1891, Oranienburg, Ger.—died Feb. 8, 1957, Heidelberg, W.Ger.), German physicist who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954 with Max Born for his invention of a new method of detecting subatomic particles and for other resulting discoveries.
Bothe taught at the universities of Berlin (1920–31), Giessen (1931–34), and Heidelberg (1934–57). In 1925 he and Hans Geiger used two Geiger counters to gather data on the Compton effect—the dependence of the increase in the wavelength of a beam of X rays upon the angle through which the beam is scattered as a result of collision with electrons. Their experiments, which simultaneously measured the energies and directions of single photons and electrons emerging from individual collisions, refuted a statistical interpretation of the Compton effect and definitely established the particle nature of electromagnetic radiation.
With the astronomer Werner Kolhörster, Bothe again applied this coincidence-counting method in 1929 and found that cosmic rays are not composed exclusively of gamma rays, as was previously believed. In 1930 Bothe discovered an unusual radiation emitted by beryllium when it is bombarded with alpha particles. This radiation was later identified by Sir James Chadwick as the neutron.
During World War II Bothe was one of the leaders of German research on nuclear energy. He was responsible for the planning and building of Germany’s first cyclotron, which was completed in 1943.
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4a3c051df2568b20d9b49f105c4eb1ad | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walther-Model | Walther Model | Walther Model
Walther Model, (born Jan. 24, 1891, Genthin, near Magdeburg, Ger.—died April 21, 1945, near Lintorf), German field marshal during World War II.
Model entered the German army in 1909, held various regimental and staff posts during World War I, and transferred to Germany’s postwar armed forces, the Reichswehr, in 1919. A loyal member of the Nazi Party, he was made a major general in 1938 and commanded the IV Army Corps in the German invasion of Poland in 1939. He was chief of staff of the Sixteenth Army during the campaign against France (1940), was promoted to lieutenant general that same year, and commanded the 3rd Panzer (armoured) Division in the invasion of the Soviet Union (1941).
Having earned a reputation as an energetic and forceful field commander, Model was promoted to full general in 1942 and took command of the Ninth Army on the Eastern Front. As that unit’s commander, he was involved in planning the Battle of Kursk (1943) and helped to retrieve the German position when that battle ended in defeat. While older German generals of aristocratic background were losing Adolf Hitler’s confidence, Model, with his middle-class origins and undoubted Nazi loyalty, became ever more trusted by the Führer. As a troubleshooter sent to repel Soviet offensives at various spots, Model became known as Hitler’s Feuerwehrmann (“fireman”). He successively took command of Army Group North (January 1944), the North-Ukraine Army Group (March 1944), and Army Group Central (June 1944) on the Eastern Front.
Model was promoted to field marshal in March 1944, and on August 17 he was appointed commander in chief of the Western Front in place of Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, who was suspected of having participated in the July Plot against Hitler’s life. Model was unable to stem the Allied sweep through northern France, however, and, when Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt returned to the Western Front as commander in chief in September, Model took command of Army Group B, based in the Netherlands. There he was well placed to repel the British airborne assault on Arnhem, and he thereby prevented the Allies from gaining an early bridgehead at the Rhine River. Together with Rundstedt, he planned the German offensive in the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944–January 1945). After this offensive had been contained, Model and his retreating Army Group B were encircled by Allied forces in the Ruhr region of Germany. Model ordered the 300,000 troops under his command to disband, and he then committed suicide.
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5bb2811bad0a0d0412ad976d1948ff04 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Walther-von-Brauchitsch | Walther von Brauchitsch | Walther von Brauchitsch
Walther von Brauchitsch, in full Heinrich Alfred Walther von Brauchitsch, (born Oct. 4, 1881, Berlin, Ger.—died Oct. 18, 1948, Hamburg, W.Ger.), German field marshal and army commander in chief during the first part of World War II, who was instrumental in planning and carrying out the campaigns against Poland (September 1939), the Netherlands, Belgium, France (May–June 1940), the Balkans (April–May 1941), and the Soviet Union (June–December 1941).
Commissioned to the Prussian guard in 1900, Brauchitsch was an officer on the general staff in World War I. As the advent of Hitler brought expansion of the army, he was chief of the East Prussian military district, commanded the 4th Army Group (1937), and, when Col. Gen. Werner Freiherr von Fritsch was forced to retire, succeeded him as head of the army in 1938. Hitler, however, was making most of the military decisions by the winter of 1941–42.
Brauchitsch successfully directed Germany’s ground war until Hitler, after the army’s near disaster before Moscow, blamed him and forced his resignation on Dec. 19, 1941. He survived the war but died before his trial by the Allies as a war criminal.
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32758fa16ff3647db2af0474d2653385 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wang-Fuzhi | Wang Fuzhi | Wang Fuzhi
Wang Fuzhi, Wade-Giles romanization Wang Fu-chih, (born Oct. 7, 1619, Hengyang, Hunan province, China—died Feb. 18, 1692, Hengyang), Chinese nationalistic philosopher, historian, and poet in the early years of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), whose works were revived by Chinese nationalists in the middle of the 19th century.
Born and educated during the last years of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Wang was an ardent patriot who bitterly resisted the invasion of China by the Manchu tribes of Manchuria and their subsequent establishment of the Qing dynasty. He raised an army and joined the resistance led by the last remnants of the Ming dynasty. By 1650, however, he realized the cause was hopeless. The next year he returned to his native village where he devoted his life to study, writing works on history, philosophy, and literature. His best-known studies are the Dutongjian lun (“Commentary on Reading the Comprehensive Mirror” of Sima Guang) and the Song lun (“Commentary on the Song”), in which he clearly demonstrated the differences between the institutions of ancient China that were sanctified in the Confucian Classics and the institutions of the Chinese dynasties that followed the feudal period in which those classics were written.
He argued that the ancient institutions were not relevant to his own time and that the purpose of the state was to serve the people. At a time when nationalistic feelings were still unknown in China, he argued that the ultimate aim of the government should be the preservation of the Chinese people and their culture. Ethics were important only if they first served to preserve the race. Alien rulers were impermissible, no matter how sinicized they seemed, and Wang glorified past heroes who fought to save Chinese land from encroachment by various Central Asian barbarians.
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0fadfb41121fa8b1d6bcead910d0cac0 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wang-Hui | Wang Hui | Wang Hui
Wang Hui, Wade-Giles romanization Wang Hui, (born 1632, Changsu, Jiangsu province, China—died 1717), probably the paramount member of the group of Chinese painters known as the Four Wangs (including Wang Shimin, 1592–1680, Wang Jian, 1598–1677, and Wang Yuanqi, 1642–1715), who represented the so-called “orthodox school” of painting in the Ming and early Qing periods. The orthodox school was based upon the dicta laid down by Dong Qichang (1555–1636). It was “orthodox” in the Confucian sense of continuing traditional modes, and it was in contrast to a group of Individualists (especially Shitao and Zhu Da) who ultimately came to represent another development of the standards for the painter and his painting as codified by Dong.
Wang Shimin and Wang Jian were the teachers of Wang Hui. Wang Hui was taken into Wang Jian’s household in 1651 and was there introduced to the leading scholar-painter of the day, Wang Shimin, who had in turn been the disciple of Dong. Thus Wang Hui enjoyed a broad and profound contact with both the theory and practice of what Dong had taught and, according to the praise of both his teachers and contemporaries, excelled in painting. Wang Hui’s fame reached the court in Beijing, and in the period 1691–98 he was commissioned to supervise the production of a series of hand scrolls commemorating the Kangxi emperor’s tour of the South. After that, however, he returned to the cultivated elegance of private life.
Wang Hui, much like the other Wangs, primarily painted landscapes. Though much of his painting is academic and pedestrian, there is in his best works an intensity in the handling of brushstroke rhythms and textures that yields a dense and detailed unity without losing the composition’s clarity or meaning.
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35fe36b3198378629a5c93b06ef95c95 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wang-Yangming | Wang Yangming | Wang Yangming
Wang Yangming, Wade-Giles romanization Wang Yang-ming, original name Wang Shouren, literary name Bean, canonized as Wencheng, Japanese Ōyō-mei, (born 1472, Yuyao, Zhejiang province, China—died 1529, Nan’an, Jiangxi), Chinese scholar-official whose idealistic interpretation of neo-Confucianism influenced philosophical thinking in East Asia for centuries. Though his career in government was rather unstable, his suppression of rebellions brought a century of peace to his region. His philosophical doctrines, emphasizing understanding of the world from within the mind, were in direct conflict with the rationalism espoused by Zhu Xi, the outstanding and highly esteemed neo-Confucian philosopher of the 12th century, and Wang’s “false teaching” was for a time proscribed.
Wang was the son of a high government official. At 15 he visited a frontier pass and practiced archery. When he married, he was so absorbed in discussing “nourishing life” (yangsheng), the search for immortality, with a Daoist priest that he stayed at the Daoist temple throughout the wedding night. In 1492 he obtained the civil service degree “a recommended person.” Visiting his father in Beijing, he sat quietly in front of some bamboos trying to discern their principles as he thought was taught by Zhu Xi, only to fall ill after seven days.
Having failed in the metropolitan civil service examinations in 1493 and 1495, he shifted his interest to military arts and Daoist techniques for longevity. In 1499, however, Wang passed the “advanced scholar” (jinshi) examination and was appointed a Ministry of Works official. He recommended to the emperor eight measures for frontier defense, strategy, and administration, which earned him early recognition. In 1500 he was appointed a Ministry of Justice secretary and in 1501 was ordered to check prisoners’ records near Nanjing. He corrected injustices in many cases.
His health declined, and he returned home to recuperate in the Yangming ravine, where he probably practiced Daoist techniques. In 1504 he returned to Beijing, supervised provincial examinations in Shandong, and then became a secretary in the Ministry of War. Beginning in 1505, scholars became his students. He lectured on making up one’s mind to become a Confucian sage and attacked the practice of reciting Classics and writing flowery compositions. Conservative scholars accused him of courting popularity. Zhan Roshui, a respected scholar-official, however, praised and befriended him.
A critical event occurred in 1506, when Wang defended a supervising censor who had been imprisoned for attacking a powerful, corrupt eunuch. For his actions Wang was beaten with 40 strokes, imprisoned for several months, and banished to remote Guizhou as head of a dispatch station, where he lived among aborigines and often fell sick. The hardship and solitude led him to realize, suddenly one night at the age of 36, that to investigate the principles (li) of things is not to seek for them in actual objects, as the rationalistic Zhu Xi had taught, but in one’s own mind. Thus he brought Idealist (xinxue) neo-Confucianism—as first taught by a 12th-century philosopher, Lu Xiangshan—to its highest expression.
A year later he pronounced another epoch-making theory: that knowledge and action are one (zhixing heyi). One knows filial piety (xiao), he argued, only when one acts upon it, and correct action requires correct knowledge. As a magistrate in Jiangxi in 1510, he carried out many reforms, including a novel “joint registration system” whereby 10 families shared responsibility for security. An imperial audience followed and then appointments as Ministry of Justice secretary, Ministry of Personnel director (1511), Imperial Studs vice minister (1512), State Ceremonials minister (1514), and assistant censor in chief and governor of southern Jiangxi and adjacent areas (1516).
Bandits and rebels had controlled Jiangxi for decades. In four military campaigns in 1517–18, Wang eliminated them. He carried out reconstruction, tax reform, joint registration, establishment of schools, and the “community compact” to improve community morals and solidarity.
On his way to suppress a rebellion in Fujian in 1519, he learned that Zhu Chenhao, prince of Ning, had rebelled. He turned to surround the prince’s base, Nanjang. Four days later he joined battle with the prince and captured him. Because Wang had been in contact with the prince, jealous officials at the capital accused him of plotting rebellion and attacking the prince only because imperial armies were approaching. One of his pupils, whom he had sent to the prince for negotiation, was imprisoned. The crisis was soon over, however, and Wang was made governor of Jiangxi.
In 1521 the new emperor appointed him war minister and awarded him the title of earl of Xinjian. His father died in 1522, and he remained home to mourn his loss. For more than five years he stayed home and discussed doctrines with his followers, who came from various parts of China and numbered in the hundreds. These conversations and those earlier constitute his main work, Chuanxilu (“Instructions for Practical Living”). In 1521 he had enunciated his doctrine of complete realization of the innate knowledge of the good.
In June 1527 Wang was called to suppress a rebellion in Guangxi. He succeeded in six months. His coughing, which had bothered him for years, then grew acute, and he became very ill. He died on his way back in Nan’an, Jiangxi, in 1529. Because a powerful minister hated him, his earldom and other hereditary privileges were revoked, disinheriting his two sons. Some who protested were dismissed or banished; his teachings were severely proscribed. Thirty-eight years later (1567), a new emperor honoured him with the title of marquis of Xinjian and the posthumous title of Wencheng (“Completion of Culture”). Beginning in 1584 he was offered sacrifice in the Confucian temple, the highest honour.
Wang’s philosophy spread all over China for 150 years and greatly influenced Japanese thought during that time. He is regarded as one of the greatest Chinese thinkers in the last 2,000 years.
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a5a106f4acf50829533d793a999f5866 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wareru | Wareru | Wareru
Wareru, also called Mogado or Chao Fa Rua, (flourished 1300), famous king of Hanthawaddy (Hansavadi, or Pegu), who ruled (1287–96) over the Mon people of Lower Burma.
Wareru was a Tai adventurer of humble origins who had married a daughter of King Ramkhamhaeng of Sukhothai and had established himself as overlord of Martaban on the Salween River in 1281. Since the reign of King Anawrahta of Pagan (1044–77), the Mon had been under Burmese rule; but after the Mongols sacked Pagan in 1287, Wareru and his ally, Tarabya, a Mon prince of Pegu, drove the Burmese out of the Irrawaddy Delta and reestablished the independence of the Mon. Subsequently, Wareru killed Tarabya and made himself the sole ruler of the Mon, with his capital at Martaban. Although he was nominally a vassal of Ramkhamhaeng, he conducted independent diplomatic relations with the emperor Kublai Khan in China. A legendary achievement of his reign was the compilation of the Dharma-śāstra, or Dhammathat, the earliest surviving law code of Burma. Wareru was murdered by his grandsons.
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06829c36694663382a39e8f5df8ee847 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Warner-Oland | Warner Oland | Warner Oland
Assorted References
…Rohmer novel, and it starred Warner Oland as the evil genius. In 1930 Lee helmed the sequel The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, which also featured Oland and Jean Arthur.
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0bf9ab825339063be58dd2ea1312476f | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Warren-Hastings | Warren Hastings | Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings, (born December 6, 1732, Churchill, near Daylesford, Oxfordshire, England—died August 22, 1818, Daylesford), the first and most famous of the British governors-general of India, who dominated Indian affairs from 1772 to 1785 and was impeached (though acquitted) on his return to England.
The son of a clergyman of the Church of England, Hastings was abandoned by his father at an early age. He was brought up by an uncle, who gave him what was probably the best education then available for a boy of his inclinations, at Westminster School in London. Hastings showed great promise as a schoolboy and seems at Westminster to have acquired the literary and scholarly tastes that were later to give him a serious interest in Indian culture and civilization. His school days were, however, cut short by his uncle’s death in 1749. He was then taken away from school and granted a writership (as the junior appointments in the East India Company were called), and in 1750, at age 17, he sailed for Bengal.
In 1750 British contact with India was still the monopoly of the East India Company, which was engaged in buying and selling goods at small settlements in Indian ports. As one of the company’s servants, for the early part of his career Hastings was employed in the company’s commercial business. But after 1756 the outlook for both the company and its servants was radically altered. The company became involved in hostilities in India both with the French and with Indian rulers, and under Robert Clive its army was able to depose the nawab, or Indian governor, of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Although the company did not at this stage intend to set itself up as the actual ruler of the province, it was now so powerful that the new nawabs became its satellites. Thus, the servants, including Hastings, began to be drawn more and more into Indian politics. Hastings served as the company’s representative at the court of the nawabs of Bengal from 1758 to 1761 and then on the company’s Council, the controlling body for its affairs in Bengal, from 1761 to 1764. His career was cut short, however, by bitter disputes within the Council. Finding himself in a minority, Hastings resigned from the company’s service and returned to England in 1765.
Short of money, Hastings sought service in India again. In 1769 he was appointed second in Council in Madras. Two years later he received his great opportunity when he was sent back to Bengal as governor in charge of the company’s affairs there. Since he had last been in Bengal, the disintegration and demoralization of the normal Indian government of the province, begun after Plassey, had gathered speed; yet the company had been reluctant to create a new system in its place. In practical terms Bengal was in the power of the British, who were also virtually its legal rulers after being granted in 1765 the powers called the dewanee by the Mughal emperor. But the business of government was still conducted by Indian officials, with very limited European participation. Hastings recognized that this situation could not go on and that the British must accept full responsibility, make their power effective, and involve themselves more closely in the work of government, even if he shared his contemporaries’ objections to excessive involvement. His view of the role of the British in India was later to be regarded as a very conservative one. He saw no “civilizing” or modernizing mission for them. Bengal was to be governed in strictly traditional ways, and the life of its people was not to be disturbed by innovation. To ensure good government, however, he felt that the British must actively intervene. In what was to be the most constructive period of his administration, from 1772 to 1774, Hastings detached the machinery of the central government from the nawab’s court and brought it to the British settlement in Calcutta under direct British control, remodeled the administration of justice throughout Bengal, and began a series of experiments aimed at bringing the collection of taxation under effective supervision.
Hastings’s period of undisputed power in Bengal came to an end in 1774 with changes in the company’s government. He acquired the new title of governor-general and new responsibilities for supervising other British settlements in India, but these powers had now to be shared with a Supreme Council of four others, three of whom were new to India. The new councillors, who were led by an army officer, Sir John Clavering, and included the immensely able and ambitious Philip Francis, immediately quarreled with Hastings. Hastings’s admirers have had little patience with Clavering and Francis; but it is possible to see that Francis had a genuine point of view in his opposition to Hastings and that there was still much in Bengal, even after Hastings’s reforms, to shock men fresh from Britain. (Bribery, extortion, and other abuses of power by Englishmen, which had been so common since Plassey, undoubtedly continued.) The quarrel between the new councillors and Hastings paralyzed the government of Bengal and produced a number of squalid episodes in which the newcomers, to discredit Hastings at home, encouraged Indians to bring accusations of malpractices against him, while his friends used various methods to deter such accusations. The most notorious of these episodes concerned one Maharaja Nandakumar, who made accusations against the governor-general but was in his turn accused of forgery and hanged for it. Hastings was certainly not guilty of procuring a judicial murder, but recent research does suggest that he knew in advance of the counterplot against Nandakumar.
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aa0abec9f1c6924dea8136580042e388 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Warren-Weaver | Warren Weaver | Warren Weaver
Warren Weaver, (born July 17, 1894, Reedsburg, Wisconsin, U.S.—died November 24, 1978), American mathematician. He studied at the University of Wisconsin, taught there (1920–32), and directed the Rockefeller Foundation’s Natural Science Division (1932–55). He is considered the first person to propose using electronic computers for the translation of natural languages. In a 1949 memo, he proposed that statistical techniques from the field of information theory could be used to enable computers to translate text from one natural language to another automatically. His proposal was based on the assumption that a document in a human language can be viewed as having been written in code, which can be broken like other codes.
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8aae063360e10185f6d5ade0a79b0af8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Warren-Wright | Warren Wright | Warren Wright
Warren Wright, (born Sept. 25, 1875, Springfield, Ohio, U.S.—died Dec. 28, 1950, Miami Beach, Fla.), American financier, owner and breeder of Thoroughbred racehorses, and proprietor of Calumet Farm.
Wright was educated in public schools and in business college and, starting in 1890, worked for more than 25 years in the firm that his father had founded, the Calumet Baking Powder Company in Chicago. He succeeded to its presidency in 1899. In 1928 the baking powder company was profitably sold to General Foods Corporation, and in 1931 Warren Wright inherited the bulk of his father’s estate of about $30,000,000.
The elder Wright had bought Calumet Farm, near Lexington, Ky., in 1924, and upon his father’s death Warren Wright inherited that stud farm and racing stable. He eventually made Calumet Farm one of the premier American stud farms. From 1941, Calumet Farm consistently produced outstanding horses, including eight winners of the Kentucky Derby. Of these horses, two gained the U.S. Triple Crown by winning the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes as well: Whirlaway in 1941, trained by Ben Jones, and Citation in 1948, trained by Jones’s son Jimmy Jones.
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e6cc0568a68a74f6971fdca780396b1e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Washington-Gladden | Washington Gladden | Washington Gladden
Washington Gladden, (born Feb. 11, 1836, Pottsgrove, Pa., U.S.—died July 2, 1918, Columbus, Ohio), American Congregational minister, crusading journalist, author, and prominent early advocate of the Social Gospel movement.
Gladden grew up on a farm, worked in a small-town newspaper office, and attended Williams College, Williamstown, Mass. After serving as religious editor of the New York Independent (1871–75), he held pastorates at Springfield, Mass. (1875–82), and Columbus (1882–1918). He aided in the exposure of the “Tweed Ring” (politicians who seized control of New York City’s treasury and subsequently plundered it of millions of dollars), while serving as acting editor of the Independent.
Gladden opposed both socialism and classical economic theory and sought to apply “Christian law” to social problems; some consider him the first American clergyman of note to approve of unionization. In 1904 he was elected moderator of the National Council of Congregational Churches and soon afterward made the startling proposal that the denomination’s foreign mission board should reject John D. Rockefeller’s gift of $100,000 on the ground that it was “tainted money.” Gladden, who stressed the simple and direct nature of the gospel as well as its practicality, wrote some 40 books, among them Applied Christianity (1887) and Social Salvation (1901). His poem “O Master, Let Me Walk with Thee” became a familiar hymn. His autobiography, Recollections, was published in 1909.
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4755daf112706ff1477016ca44b3135e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wasil-ibn-Ata | Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ | Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ
Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ, , in full Wāṣil Ibn ʿaṭāʾ Al-ghazzāl, also called Abū Ḥudhayfah, (born c. 700, Arabia—died 748, Arabia), Muslim theologian considered the founder of the Muʿtazilah sect.
As a young man Wāṣil went to Basra, Iraq, where he studied under the celebrated ascetic Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and met other influential religious figures who lived there. In Wāṣil’s time there began the discussions that led to the development of Islāmic speculative theology. At first theological controversies among Muslims were closely tied to political events, the principal issue being the legitimacy of the rule of the Umayyad house, which seized power after the death of the fourth caliph, ʿAlī.
Wāṣil’s doctrinal formulations gave the Muʿtazilah faction coherence as a religious sect. At the same time, both Wāṣil and the Muʿtazilah became involved in a revolutionary movement led by the ʿAbbāsids that was to result in the overthrow of the Umayyads. Wāṣil gathered around himself many devoted believers and ascetics, whom he often sent out as emissaries to spread his doctrines in distant provinces.
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51a1ba85c04d3fc97b1f0279e6c115e7 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Watsuji-Tetsuro | Watsuji Tetsurō | Watsuji Tetsurō
Watsuji Tetsurō, (born March 1, 1889, Himeji, Japan—died Dec. 26, 1960, Tokyo), Japanese moral philosopher and historian of ideas, outstanding among modern Japanese thinkers who have tried to combine the Eastern moral spirit with Western ethical ideas.
Watsuji studied philosophy at Tokyo University and became professor of ethics at the universities of Kyōto (1931–34) and Tokyo (1934–49). His earliest writings include the two notable works A Study of Nietzsche (1913) and Søren Kierkegaard (1915), by which he paved the way for the introduction of existentialism into Japan decades later. Then he turned to the study of the spirit of ancient Japanese culture and of Japanese Buddhism, writing books and essays treating various aspects of Japanese culture. He extended his research farther afield, into early Buddhism in India and its subsequent developments. His major writings, however, belong in the field of ethics: Ethics as a Philosophy of Man (1934), Ethics, 3 vol. (1937–49), and History of Ethical Thought in Japan, 2 vol. (1952).
Watsuji tried to create a systematic Japanese ethics using Western categories. In contrast to what he saw as Western ethics’ overemphasis on the private individual, Watsuji emphasized man both as an individual and as a social being who is deeply involved with his society. Watsuji introduced certain Buddhist dialectic elements in order to show how the individual is absorbed into society, and he cited various aspects of Japanese art and culture as expressing the interdependence of man and society. He developed his view of life as it applies to mutual personal and social relations, from the simplest to the fully integrated—from the family to the state.
Only one of Watsuji’s works is available in English translation: A Climate: A Philosophical Study, translated by Geoffrey Bownas (1961, reprinted as Climate and Culture, 1988).
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1c9054b51c0dbfa458a360c526f7bf07 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Waylon-Jennings | Waylon Jennings | Waylon Jennings
Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. The gap between country and the mainstream of pop music continued to narrow in that decade and the next as electric guitars replaced more traditional instruments and country music became more acceptable to a national urban audience. Country retained its vitality into the…
…spearheaded by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings (b. June 15, 1937, Littlefield, Texas, U.S.—d. February 13, 2002, Chandler, Arizona). Sometimes called progressive country, outlaw music was an attempt to escape the formulaic constraints of the Nashville Sound (simple songs, the use of studio musicians, and lush production), country’s dominant style…
…back to Texas and, with Waylon Jennings, spearheaded the country music movement known as outlaw music. Beginning with the narrative album Red Headed Stranger (1975), which featured the hit song “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” he became one of the most popular performers in country music as a whole.…
…as “Mental Revenge” (1967) for Waylon Jennings and “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town” (1969) for Kenny Rogers.
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19847946e2ade7a9bb23693cbb50a1c9 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wayne-Rooney | Wayne Rooney | Wayne Rooney
Wayne Rooney, in full Wayne Mark Rooney, (born October 24, 1985, Liverpool, England), English professional football (soccer) player who rose to international football stardom as a teenager while playing with the English Premier League powerhouse Manchester United.
Rooney made his professional debut with his local club Everton at age 16, becoming the youngest goal scorer in Premier League history in his first season (the record has since been surpassed). After two years playing for Everton, he transferred to Manchester United in 2004. With Manchester the precocious young striker quickly became one of the most popular football stars in the United Kingdom, as well as fodder for the country’s notorious tabloid industry along with his girlfriend (later his wife) Coleen McLoughlin. The couple’s late-night exploits and home life were widely disseminated by the press, and McLoughlin (Coleen Rooney from 2008) was able to parlay her exposure into a media career.
Rooney was named England’s Young Player of the Year in each of his first two seasons in Manchester. In 2006–07 he helped lead United to a Premier League championship and a victory in the Carling Cup. He was a key contributor to United’s Premier League and Champions League titles in the 2007–08 season, which were followed by the team’s first FIFA Club World Cup championship, with Rooney scoring the only goal in United’s 1–0 win in the tournament final. Rooney and Man U won a third consecutive league title the following season. In 2010 he was named both the Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year and the Football Writers’ Association Footballer of the Year as the best player in English football for the 2009–10 season. Rooney was a part of United’s league-title-winning squads in 2010–11 and 2012–13, and during the 2011–12 season he scored a personal-best 27 Premier League goals. He continued to be the team’s top goal scorer in many of the following years, although United failed to win any major titles over that span until the club captured the first FA Cup of Rooney’s career in 2016. In January 2017 Rooney scored his 250th goal for United, passing Sir Bobby Charlton to become the club’s all-time leading scorer. Six months later Rooney left United, having ultimately scored 253 goals with the club, and rejoined Everton. After just one season back with his first professional team, however, Rooney signed with D.C. United of Major League Soccer.
Rooney was named a member of the English national team in 2003 and that year became—for a time—both the youngest player and the youngest goal scorer in England’s history. He starred on an England squad that advanced to the quarterfinals of the 2004 European Championship (Euro 2004), but a slow recovery from a foot injury limited his effectiveness in the 2006 World Cup finals, where he went scoreless. England failed to qualify for Euro 2008, but Rooney led his country in scoring in qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup, where England lost in the round of 16. He was suspended for the first two games of Euro 2012 owing to a red card he received in England’s final qualifying match and ultimately appeared in only two contests in the tournament, as England was eliminated in the quarterfinals. Rooney scored his first World Cup goal at the 2014 tournament, but England was surprisingly eliminated from that event after playing just two games (both losses), which was the earliest the country had ever been knocked out of the World Cup. In August 2014 Rooney was named captain of the English national team. During a European Championship qualifying match against Switzerland in September 2015, Rooney scored his 50th international goal, breaking Sir Bobby Charlton’s record for the most career goals scored for the English national team. He retired from the national team in August 2017 with a total of 53 goals in 119 international appearances.
In 2006 Rooney’s autobiography, Wayne Rooney: My Story So Far (ghostwritten by journalist Hunter Davies), was published.
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eb4f59f81c4cac9ad1b535b548e4868f | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Weary-Dunlop | Weary Dunlop | Weary Dunlop
Weary Dunlop, byname of Sir Ernest Edward Dunlop, (born July 12, 1907, Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia—died July 2, 1993, Melbourne), Australian physician, one of the most famous Australian World War II veterans, remembered for the compassionate medical care and leadership he provided for fellow prisoners of war (POWs) captured by the Japanese.
The second of two sons born to a family of Scottish heritage, Dunlop spent his early years on a farm near Stewarton, Victoria, before his family relocated to Benalla, Victoria. After working as a pharmacist’s apprentice, he attended pharmacy school in Melbourne, graduating in 1928. During this period he also served part-time in the army, until 1929.
Dunlop then studied medicine at the University of Melbourne. There his last name, the same as that of a well-known manufacturer of automobile tires, earned him the nickname “Weary,” though explanations of the derivation of that nickname vary. Some sources identify it as a kind of cockeyed synonym for “tires,” which is itself a homophone in British spelling: “tyres” (rubber wheel coverings) and “tires” (feels fatigue). Other sources point to the Dunlop company’s familiar marketing of tires touted for their durable “wear.” While studying at the University of Melbourne, Dunlop distinguished himself as a member of its rugby union team. He also played for the Australian national team (once each in 1932 and in 1934) and eventually became the first native of Victoria to be inducted into the Wallaby (Australian rugby union) Hall of Fame. Moreover, Dunlop was a champion boxer while a student.
After receiving his medical degree in 1934, Dunlop rejoined the military in 1935 as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps. Two years later he received a master of surgery degree from the University of Melbourne. He then continued his medical studies in England at St. Bartholomew’s Medical School, and in 1938 he was inducted into the Royal College of Surgeons. When World War II broke out, Dunlop was still in England, practicing as an emergency medicine special surgeon at St. Mary’s Hospital in London.
Having reenlisted again in the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1939, Dunlop joined the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). After serving in Jerusalem and earning a promotion to the rank of major, Dunlop was named deputy assistant director of medical services at Australian Corps Headquarters and AIF Headquarters in Gaza and Alexandria, Egypt. During campaigns in Greece and on Crete, he served with a casualty clearing unit and then became the senior surgeon at Tobruk, Libya. When the war in the Pacific began, Dunlop was transferred to Indonesia. He was promoted to temporary lieutenant colonel in February 1942 and given command of No. 1 Allied General Hospital at Bandung, on Java. When the island fell to the Japanese in March, Dunlop had an opportunity to escape, but he remained behind to tend to his patients and became a POW.
After being initially held prisoner in Singapore, Dunlop was sent in January 1943 to Thailand, where he became one of the roughly 60,000 Allied POWs (about 13,000 of whom were Australians) who were forced to work on the construction of the Burma Railway, which was being built from near Bangkok to Thanbyuzayat, Burma (Myanmar), some 280 miles (450 km) away. Dunlop was both the chief physician and the commanding officer of more than 1,000 POWs, alternately known as “Dunlop’s Thousand” or the “Dunlop Force.” Conditions for the POWs were abominable. Not only were they underfed and denied adequate medicine, but they were also cruelly mistreated and tortured by their Japanese captors. Dysentery, cholera, diarrhea, and other diseases were rampant.
Dunlop, who had assumed command of his group reluctantly, was responsible for determining whether the men in his charge who had been chosen by the Japanese for work detail on any given day were healthy enough for the task. He was also the one who, at the end of the day, tended to their illnesses and injuries after their long hours of exhausting labour. Lacking medical supplies, Dunlop and the doctors who worked with him managed to create an effective surgical hospital through improvisation and scavenging. Artificial legs were fashioned from bamboo. Antiseptic saline was produced by an apparatus cobbled together from bamboo, rubber tubing, and sawn-off beer bottles.
Dunlop displayed both compassion and courage in caring for and protecting his men. On a number of occasions he put his own life on the line by standing up to the Japanese to defend his fellow POWs against cruelty and brutality. In one instance Dunlop saved the life of a blind amputee by literally putting himself between the POW and the bayonets of Japanese soldiers who had determined that his life was not worth maintaining. A much respected leader, Dunlop epitomized the “mateship,” self-sacrifice, and bravery that were hallmarks of the ANZAC legend, the tradition of the indomitable of spirit of Australian troops that had begun with the original ANZACs in the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I. Dunlop wrote about that spirit in the preface to the published versions of the diaries that he kept from 1942 to 1945.
After the Japanese surrender that ended the war in August 1945, Dunlop stayed on in Thailand to play an important role in coordinating the evacuation of the liberated POWs. He returned to Australia in October. In February 1946 Dunlop left active service in the army, joining the reserves with the rank of honorary colonel.
After the war, Dunlop resumed the practice of medicine as a civilian, taking a special interest in the treatment of cancer and gastroesophageal surgery. He also taught at the University of Melbourne. In 1969 he was knighted in recognition of his contribution to medicine. Among numerous other honours, he was named Australian of the Year in 1977. And in 1988, on the occasion of Australia’s bicentennial, he was included on a list of 200 people who had made the country great.
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7ea4225231d02581cea3c6a6b3d7faec | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wen-Jiabao | Wen Jiabao | Wen Jiabao
Wen Jiabao, (born September 1942, Tianjin, China), Chinese official, premier (prime minister) of China from 2003 to 2013.
Wen studied at the Beijing Institute of Geology, where he earned a graduate degree in structural geology in 1968. While a student at the institute, he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and upon graduation he went to work as a technician and political instructor at the Gansu Provincial Geological Bureau. He rose to become deputy director general of the bureau before joining the Ministry of Geology and Mineral Resources in 1982. Wen was named deputy director of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee in 1985. The following year he was elevated to director, a post he held until 1992.
During his tenure heading the General Office, Wen held a number of other party positions. He served as chief of staff to three general secretaries of the CCP—Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang, and Jiang Zemin. In 1989, in a highly publicized event, Wen accompanied Zhao to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square while a series of dramatic pro-democracy demonstrations were taking place. Both Wen and Zhao were photographed visiting with demonstrators, an act interpreted as a gesture of support for the protestors’ cause. Although Zhao was placed under house arrest and the demonstrations were forcibly repressed by the government, Wen managed to escape lasting political damage from his association with Zhao. In 1993 Wen became a full member of the Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee, and four years later he became a member of the Political Bureau. In 1998 he was appointed one of China’s four vice-premiers. Wen was credited with helping to launch a program aimed at reducing taxes on Chinese farmers. He also was involved in financial and environmental matters.
In March 2003 Wen was formally approved as the new premier of China, succeeding Zhu Rongji. His experience in shaping agricultural policy, in particular, was believed to have helped his bid for the premiership, as one of the immediate priorities for China was revitalizing its lagging rural economy. As premier, Wen was also entrusted with restructuring China’s heavily indebted banking system and continuing to reform its state-owned enterprises to make them more globally competitive. In May 2008, shortly after Wen began his second term as premier, a massive earthquake struck Sichuan province in southwestern China, leaving tens of thousands of people dead. Wen helped direct relief efforts after the quake and served as the government’s public face of compassion and leadership in the wake of the tragedy. Later in his second term, Wen began to publicly advocate reforms of the Chinese political system, including increased democratic participation by citizens. Wen stepped down as premier in March 2013 and was succeeded by Li Keqiang.
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b6a7da73ac713d5378ccbcc1886c1a2b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wen-Yiduo | Wen Yiduo | Wen Yiduo
Xu Zhimo and the American-educated Wen Yiduo, were creating new forms based on Western models, introducing the beauty of music and colour into their extremely popular lyrical verse.
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9b926cc9209ac9767117f92c3a454b87 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wenceslas-Cobergher | Wenceslas Cobergher | Wenceslas Cobergher
Wenceslas Cobergher, also called Wensel Coeberger, (born 1557/61, Antwerp [Belgium]—died November 24, 1634, Brussels), Flemish architect, painter, and engraver who was a leader in the development of the Flemish Baroque style of architecture, based on the early Italian Baroque buildings of the Roman school.
Cobergher received his education as a painter in the workshop of Maarten de Vos and by studying works of art in Paris, Rome, and Naples (1583–1604). From 1605 until his death, he was painter, architect, and engineer to the governors of the Spanish Netherlands. He painted altarpieces for churches in Italy and in Flanders, but his pictures are far less important than his few surviving buildings. Of these the most famous are St. Augustin in Antwerp (begun 1615) and the church of Notre Dame (1609) in Montaigu, which show the influence of the design of St. Peter’s in Rome. He also wrote on archaeology.
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e83be3b8761ebfa1376a07d04c011057 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wendy-Wasserstein | Wendy Wasserstein | Wendy Wasserstein
Wendy Wasserstein, (born October 18, 1950, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died January 30, 2006, New York City), American playwright whose work probes, with humour and sensibility, the predicament facing educated women who came of age in the second half of the 20th century. Her drama The Heidi Chronicles (1988) was awarded both a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award in 1989.
Wasserstein was educated at Mount Holyoke College (B.A., 1971) and City College of the City University of New York (M.A., 1973), where she studied creative writing with playwright Israel Horovitz and novelist Joseph Heller. In 1976 she received an M.F.A. from Yale University.
Wasserstein’s first play, Any Woman Can’t (1973), is a cutting farce on one of her major themes—a woman’s attempts to succeed in an environment traditionally dominated by men. Two other early works are Uncommon Women and Others (1975; revised and expanded, 1977) and Isn’t It Romantic (1981), which explore women’s attitudes toward marriage and society’s expectations of women. In The Heidi Chronicles a successful art historian discovers that her independent life choices have alienated her from men as well as women. The Sisters Rosensweig (1992) continues the theme into middle age. Later plays include An American Daughter (1997) and Third (2005).
Wasserstein’s other works include an adaptation for television of the John Cheever short story “The Sorrows of Gin” (1979); the play When Dinah Shore Ruled the Earth (1975; with Christopher Durang); The Man in a Case (1986), an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s short story; a musical, Miami (1986); and a children’s book, Pamela’s First Musical (1996). She also wrote several collections of essays, including Shiksa Goddess (2001).
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6c310caa5120175c5a98f63ad3087747 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Werner-Bischof | Werner Bischof | Werner Bischof
Werner Bischof, in full Werner Adalbert Bischof, (born April 26, 1916, Zürich, Switzerland—found dead May 16, 1954, Peruvian Andes), Swiss photojournalist whose photographs are notable for their empathy, strong sense of design, and sensitive use of light.
From 1932 to 1936 Bischof attended the Zürich School of Applied Arts, where he studied photography with Hans Finsler. He worked as an advertising and fashion photographer for several years and in 1942 began a lifelong association with the Zürich magazine Du (“You”). Initially interested in still-life photography, he later turned increasingly to portraiture.
In 1945 Bischof photographed war-torn areas of France, Germany, and the Netherlands, and in the late 1940s he freelanced throughout Europe. After joining Magnum Photos (a photographers’ cooperative that then included Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, and Ernst Haas) in 1949, Bischof continued to photograph on assignment for Life magazine and Paris-Match, among others. His work took him to India (where he movingly captured a famine in Bihar), Japan, Southeast Asia, Korea, the United States, and Latin America. A Magnum assignment, “Women Today,” which he had started in Finland, was the motivation for his travel in Latin America. He was killed when the car in which he was traveling went over the edge of a Peruvian gorge.
Collections of his photographs include Japan (1954), with a text by Robert Guillain; Incas to Indians (1956; also published as From Incas to Indios), created with photographers Robert Frank and Pierre Verger; The World of Werner Bischof (1959); and Werner Bischof (1966).
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d3d25bd3379628b2e9b169e2f74aae6d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Werner-Egk | Werner Egk | Werner Egk
Werner Egk, original name Werner Mayer, (born May 17, 1901, Auchsesheim, near Donauwörth, Ger.—died July 10, 1983, Inning, W.Ger.), German composer primarily of music for the theatre.
Egk studied composition with Carl Orff in Munich, where he settled and composed music for puppet plays and radio plays. He conducted his own first opera for the stage, Die Zaubergeige (1935), in Frankfurt am Main.
His operas and ballets, often satirical, usually portray historical or legendary figures, and he wrote his own librettos. The immediate appeal of Egk’s music was due largely to its neo-romantic spirit. His primary influence was Igor Stravinsky. In 1938, while in Berlin, he conducted his highly successful opera, Peer Gynt (after Henrik Ibsen), one of his most popular stage works. His ballets, such as Abraxas (1948) and Casanova in London (1969), also attracted wide attention. Abraxas was banned, after five sold-out performances, on grounds of obscenity. Egk also wrote instrumental music.
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2f962eb9c4f0777528b42a582edb99a6 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Werner-Forssmann | Werner Forssmann | Werner Forssmann
Werner Forssmann, (born Aug. 20, 1904, Berlin, Ger.—died June 1, 1979, Schopfheim, W. Ger.), German surgeon who shared with André F. Cournand and Dickinson W. Richards the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1956. A pioneer in heart research, Forssmann contributed to the development of cardiac catheterization, a procedure in which a tube is inserted into a vein at the elbow and passed through the vein into the heart. While a surgical resident in Berlin (1929), Forssmann used himself as the first human subject, watching the progress of the catheter in a mirror held in front of a fluoroscope screen. Forssmann’s daring experiment was condemned at the time as foolhardy and dangerous, and in the face of severe criticism he abandoned cardiology for urology.
Forssmann’s procedure, with slight modifications, was put into practice in 1941 by Richards and Cournand, and has since become an extremely valuable tool in diagnosis and research. It has made possible, among other things, precise measurement of intracardiac pressure and blood flow, injection into the heart of drugs and of opaque material visible on X-ray photographs, and insertion of electrodes for the regulation of the heartbeat.
Forssmann graduated in medicine from the University of Berlin (1928) and then did postgraduate study in urology at Berlin and Mainz. He served as chief of surgery at the city hospital in Dresden-Friedrichstadt and in 1958 was named chief of the surgical division of the Evangelical Hospital in Düsseldorf.
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87ecd5bec89c29fd5af734df337deb99 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Werner-Sombart | Werner Sombart | Werner Sombart
Werner Sombart, (born January 19, 1863, Ermsleben, Saxony, Prussia—died May 18, 1941, Berlin, Germany), German historical economist who incorporated Marxist principles and Nazi theories in his writings on capitalism.
The son of a wealthy landowner and politician, Sombart was educated in Berlin, Pisa, and Rome, obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Berlin in 1888. He taught at the University of Breslau (1890–1906) and later returned to teach at the University of Berlin.
Initially a supporter of Marxism, Sombart grew increasingly conservative and anti-Marxist. Nevertheless, his historical works on class and the evolution of society, most notably Der moderne Kapitalismus (1902; “Modern Capitalism”), show the influence of Marxist ideology, particularly in his methodological approach.
Sombart’s The Jew and Modern Capitalism (1911) refutes Max Weber’s theory of the Protestant ethic, arguing that Jews introduced the spirit of capitalism into Northern Europe after being dispersed by the Inquisition. At the time, he regarded Jews as a positive economic force, but his later writings reflect the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime. In one of his last publications, A New Social Philosophy (1934), Sombart analyzed social problems “from the point of view of the national socialist [Nazi] way of thinking.”
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8f00baaa07f3e9479041159f660cd1d0 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wes-Anderson | Wes Anderson | Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson, in full Wesley Wales Anderson, (born May 1, 1969, Houston, Texas, U.S.), American director and screenwriter known for the distinctive visual aesthetic of his quirky comedies and for his collaboration with screenwriter and actor Owen Wilson.
Anderson and Wilson met while both were students at the University of Texas at Austin, and their working relationship began even prior to Anderson’s 1991 graduation with a degree in philosophy. Together they wrote the script for a short film called Bottle Rocket (1994), which was directed by Anderson and featured performances by Wilson and his brother Luke Wilson. The short film came to the attention of director and producer James L. Brooks, who sponsored a full-length version of the story. Retaining its title and cast, Bottle Rocket (1996) became Anderson’s first feature film.
Anderson and Wilson next cowrote Rushmore (1998), which starred Jason Schwartzman as an indefatigable prep-school student and Bill Murray as his wealthy benefactor and sometime foe. Anderson’s third collaboration with Wilson, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), was a darkly comic exploration of the dysfunctional adulthoods of a family of child prodigies. It was also the most visually ornate of Anderson’s films to that point, featuring the carefully composed shots, richly realized sets, and other stylistic flourishes that had become his hallmark. Its big-name cast included Murray, Gene Hackman, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Anjelica Huston in addition to the Wilson brothers, and it earned Anderson and Wilson an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay.
Anderson’s next directorial effort, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), about a Jacques Cousteau-like adventurer (played by Murray), marked his first screenplay collaboration with writer-director Noah Baumbach. He then directed The Darjeeling Limited (2007), which he cowrote with Schwartzman and actor-screenwriter Roman Coppola. It starred Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, and Adrien Brody as estranged brothers traveling in India by train to visit their mother (Huston) following their father’s death.
Anderson turned to stop-motion animation for Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), an adaptation of a book by popular children’s author Roald Dahl. The film, which earned an Oscar nomination for best animated feature, was cowritten with Baumbach and featured the voices of Murray, Schwartzman, Owen Wilson, George Clooney, and Meryl Streep. Despite the challenges of the medium, its settings were as detailed and rich as those of any of Anderson’s live-action films.
With Moonrise Kingdom (2012), Anderson presented a gently humorous story of adolescent love set in a small New England town in the 1960s, and its screenplay, cowritten with Coppola, landed him another Oscar nomination. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) is a series of conjoined interludes relating to the denizens and employees of the titular caravansary, a sprawling pink monstrosity located in a fictional eastern European country. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. Anderson earned nods for his work writing and directing the film as well.
Anderson returned to stop-motion animation for Isle of Dogs (2018), in which all canines in the fictional city of Megasaki are exiled to Trash Island. When a 12-year-old boy tries to rescue his beloved pet, Spots, a band of dogs join his quest. An all-star cast that included Murray, Bryan Cranston, and Edward Norton lent its voices to the comedy.
Anderson’s other projects included the interior design for Bar Luce (2015), a café located in the Fondazione Prada, a cultural institution in Milan. He also curated the exhibition “Spitzmaus Mummy in a Coffin and Other Treasures,” with his partner, writer and designer Juman Malouf, at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The show opened in 2018 and showcased an extraordinary number of often-overlooked objects from the museum’s collection.
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88b4f1f0bd0b3835bc0a1765e80c347a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wes-Montgomery | Wes Montgomery | Wes Montgomery
Wes Montgomery, byname of John Leslie Montgomery, (born March 6, 1923, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.—died June 15, 1968, Indianapolis), American jazz guitarist who was probably the most influential postwar improviser on his instrument.
Montgomery began playing guitar in his late teens and played in the Lionel Hampton band in 1948–50 and in Indianapolis during the 1950s, most often with his brothers Buddy (piano, vibes) and Monk (electric bass). In California in the late 1950s, he played with them in the Mastersounds and then as the Montgomery Brothers (1960–61).
Most of Montgomery’s finest recordings, including The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, Movin’ Along, So Much Guitar!, and Full House, date from 1959–63. In the early 1960s he played briefly in a John Coltrane group that never recorded. Beginning in 1964 a series of recordings with string orchestra and big band accompaniments became best-sellers; in concerts and on international tours, however, he led small groups and worked in a quintet with his brothers for the rest of his life.
Inspired by late-swing guitarist Charlie Christian, Montgomery improvised in broken phrases and with a bop harmonic imagination. Instead of using a plectrum or fingers, he played guitar with the soft part of his thumb, resulting in a soft attack especially appropriate to his lyrical lines. He organized his solos by playing single-note melodies in initial choruses, in octaves in middle choruses, and in chords in climactic choruses. His solo forms especially were an influence on later guitarists, most prominently George Benson.
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630111d7a6896e0dd42078277cb879d5 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wesley-A-Clark | Wesley A. Clark | Wesley A. Clark
…after the meeting, computer scientist Wesley Clark persuaded Roberts that the actual networking should be handled by smaller computers called interface message processors (IMPs) rather than the large mainframes that would be the nodes of ARPANET. Roberts modified the ARPANET plan to incorporate Clark’s suggestion. On October 29, 1969, American…
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f4c30b134865f6a960e61b128e38ba2d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wiching | Wiching | Wiching
…headed by a Frankish cleric, Wiching, bishop of Nitra (in Slovakia), strengthened their position in Moravia. During Methodius’s lifetime the Slavic clergy had the upper hand; after his death in 884, though, Wiching banned Methodius’s disciples from Moravia, and most of them moved to Bulgaria. Furthermore, Pope Stephen V reversed…
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7a4f4fe6c95b3676eca59e0aa1e5708f | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wifred | Wifred | Wifred
…Pamplona in Navarre, and Count Wilfred of Barcelona (873–898)—whose descendants were to govern Catalonia until the 15th century—asserted his independence from the Franks by extending his rule over several small Catalan counties.
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4dca5084dfd5e28c7dd088c43b55a07f | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilford-Woodruff | Wilford Woodruff | Wilford Woodruff
Wilford Woodruff, (born March 1, 1807, Farmington, Conn., U.S.—died Sept. 2, 1898, San Francisco, Calif.), fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), who issued the proclamation that relinquished the church practice of polygyny, or polygamy as it was popularly called.
Converted in 1833, Woodruff joined the Mormons in Kirtland, Ohio, moved with them to Missouri, to Nauvoo, Ill., and finally to Utah (1847). Woodruff, whose journal has been an important source for Mormon history, was appointed official church historian in 1875. A practicing polygynist as he entered his presidential term (1889–98), he published in 1890 a “revelation,” known as the Manifesto, officially ending plural marriage for Mormons.
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c376e1ea02019062eaf3e30e7d267dbd | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilfredo-Gomez | Wilfredo Gomez | Wilfredo Gomez
…when he faced Puerto Rican Wilfredo Gomez, the WBC junior featherweight (122 pounds; also known as super bantamweight) champion, who had moved up in weight class for the fight. Gomez stepped into the ring unbeaten in 33 fights and flaunting 32 knockouts. Sanchez knocked down Gomez in the first round…
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34fcc7a4f1d139b73e37e8d041cd8595 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilfrid-Scawen-Blunt | Wilfrid Scawen Blunt | Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, (born Aug. 17, 1840, Petworth House, Sussex, Eng.—died Sept. 10, 1922, Newbuildings, Sussex), English poet best known for his elegant erotic verse and his expression of anti-imperialism.
He entered the diplomatic service in 1858 but retired on his marriage with Lady Anne Noel, Lord Byron’s granddaughter, in 1869. He and his wife traveled frequently in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Arabia, and they established a famous stud for the breeding of Arabian horses.
Blunt became known as an ardent sympathizer with Muslim aspirations, and in The Future of Islam (1882) he directed attention to the forces that produced the movements of Pan-Islamism and Mahdism. He was a violent opponent of British policy in the Sudan and supported the national party in Egypt. Ideas About India (1885) was the result of two visits to that country, which confirmed his distrust of colonialism and his enthusiasm for self-government. In 1888 he was imprisoned for two months in Galway and Kilmainham jails after a scuffle with the police at an Irish political meeting, an experience described in the sonnets of In Vinculis (1889). A strikingly handsome man, he had numerous love affairs with women in the aristocratic and cultured circles in which he moved (described in the “secret memoirs” first made public in 1972). His Sonnets and Songs by Proteus (1875; revised and enlarged 1881 and 1892) contains the best of his love poetry. Blunt published a complete edition of his poetical works in 1914 and two volumes of My Diaries (1919 and 1920).
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b2e33410bd3aceb98285d0d69bb75826 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilfrid-Sellars | Wilfrid Sellars | Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Sellars, in full Wilfrid Stalker Sellars, (born May 20, 1912, Ann Arbor, Mich., U.S.—died July 2, 1989, Pittsburgh, Pa.), American philosopher best known for his critique of traditional philosophical conceptions of mind and knowledge and for his uncompromising effort to explain how human reason and thought can be reconciled with the vision of nature found in science. Although he was one of the most original and influential American philosophers of the second half of the 20th century, he remains largely unknown outside academic circles.
Sellars’s father, Roy Sellars, was a distinguished Canadian philosopher. After studying at the University of Michigan and the University of Buffalo, the younger Sellars was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he earned bachelor’s (1936) and master’s (1940) degrees in philosophy, politics, and economics. He was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa in 1938. After serving as an intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy (1943–46), he was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He was professor of philosophy at Yale University from 1959 to 1963 and University Professor of Philosophy and Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh from 1963 until his death.
Sellars came to prominence in 1956 with the publication of his essay “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” a critique of a conception of mind and knowledge inherited from René Descartes (1596–1650). Sellars there attacked what he called the “myth of the given,” the Cartesian idea that one can have immediate and indubitable perceptual knowledge of one’s own sense experiences. Sellars’s ideas anticipated and contributed to the development of theories of mind, knowledge, and science that played significant roles in later debates on these topics.
Sellars was an articulate exponent of the modernist enterprise of reconciling the comprehensive picture of reality emerging from the theoretical activities of natural science with the traditional conception of human beings as morally accountable agents and subjective centres of experience. In “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” (1960), he characterized this project as bringing together into one “synoptic view” two competing images of “man-in-the-world”: the “scientific” image derived from the fruits of theory construction and the “manifest” image, the “framework in terms of which man encountered himself.”
Sellars subscribed to a form of philosophical naturalism according to which science is the final arbiter of what exists. Entities exist if and only if they would be invoked in a complete scientific explanation of the world. In “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind,” he wrote, “In the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not.” His synoptic project, however, required him to develop ways of accommodating dimensions of human experience that seem initially to resist incorporation into the “scientific image.” Science describes how humans do think and act, for example, but not how they ought to think and act, and this latter element therefore requires explanation if it is to be reconciled with Sellars’s naturalism. His fundamental response to these challenges was to develop a sophisticated theory of conceptual roles, concretely instantiated in human conduct and transmitted by modes of social interaction, including language. He used this theory in turn to defend a form of linguistic nominalism, the denial of the real existence of universals or irreducibly mentalistic entities as the referents or meanings of linguistic expressions. Sellars analyzed discourse ostensibly about abstract or mentalistic entities as discourse about linguistic role players framed in a “transposed mode of speech.”
Sellars’s account of knowledge and experience drew upon his deep reading of the history of philosophy, particularly the works of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). In contrast to at least some other advocates of naturalism, Sellars rejected the idea that normative concepts such as knowledge can or should be analyzed in terms of nonnormative concepts. On Sellars’s view, characterizing people as knowers does not require attributing to them a special inner psychological state but merely involves noting their ability to engage in various public behaviours, such as giving reasons for what they claim to know. Like Kant, he understood perceptual experience as synthesizing the contributions of a noncognitive faculty of sensation and a conceptual faculty of thought.
Sellars is often credited with originating the theory of functionalism in the philosophy of mind, according to which mental states are individuated by the inferential roles they play in thought. Because functional states are independent of their physical realization, it is a consequence of Sellars’s view that they can in principle be realized in digital computers as well as in biological organisms. But Sellars also argued that the classification of sensory mental states rests on analogies that ultimately pertain to similarities and differences of intrinsic content within those states. Sensations can therefore be synoptically integrated into the scientific image, he concluded, only after they and the microphysical details of the scientific image have been reconceived in terms of a uniform ontology whose fundamental entities are “absolute processes.”
Sellars also introduced the functionalist idea of explaining semantic meaning in terms of the inferential and ultimately behavioral roles played by particular linguistic expressions, a view later known as conceptual-role semantics. Public speech episodes—i.e., particular linguistic utterances or acts of inscription—instantiate semantic-conceptual roles by virtue of being regulated by rules governing linguistic responses to nonconceptual stimuli (“language entries”), behavioral responses to conceptual states (“language exits”), and transitions from one linguistic commitment to another (“intralinguistic moves”). Roles or functions are themselves individuated in terms of the structure of positive and negative uniformities generated in the natural order by such entries, exits, and moves.
Finally, Sellars proposed that what makes an entity a person is its membership in a community whose most general common intentions fundamentally define the structure of norms and values in terms of which the cognitive and moral conduct of those members comes to be mutually recognized and appraised. He consequently concluded that only by enriching the scientific image with a functionally interpreted language of intentions can one complete “the task of showing that categories pertaining to man as a person who finds himself confronted by standards…can be reconciled with the idea that man is what science says he is.”
Sellars’s major published works, in addition to the essays mentioned above, include Science, Perception, and Reality (1963), Philosophical Perspectives (1967), Science and Metaphysics: Variations on Kantian Themes (1968), Naturalism and Ontology (1979), and “Foundations for a Metaphysics of Pure Process” (1981).
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7154e34fec0dd40c14fad256eb4c9edf | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-August-Streitberg | Wilhelm Streitberg | Wilhelm Streitberg
Wilhelm Streitberg, (born Feb. 23, 1864, Rüdesheim, Nassau [Germany]—died Aug. 19, 1925, Leipzig, Ger.), German historical linguist who, with Karl Brugmann, founded (1891) and edited Indogermanische Forschungen (“Indo-European Researches”), an influential journal in the field of Indo-European linguistic studies.
Much of Streitberg’s scholarly work concerns comparative and historical Germanic linguistics. His books include Urgermanische Grammatik (1896; “Proto-Germanic Grammar”), Gotisches Elementarbuch (1897; “Gothic Primer”), and Die gotische Bibel (1908–10; “The Gothic Bible”), which presents the extant biblical texts written in the Gothic language. During his academic career he held professorships at Freiburg (1889–98), Münster (1899–1909), Munich (1909–20), and Leipzig (1920 until his death).
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dc5faa07cf75358e38ae209b47fb2516 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Backhaus | Wilhelm Backhaus | Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus, (born March 26, 1884, Leipzig, Ger.—died July 5, 1969, Villach, Austria), German pianist who was best known for his interpretation of the works of Ludwig van Beethoven.
Backhaus studied piano in Leipzig and in Frankfurt am Main. His first concert appearance took place when he was eight years of age, and in 1905 he won the Rubinstein prize in Paris. He held teaching appointments at the Royal Manchester College of Music (1905), at Sondershausen (1907), and at the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia (1925). After World War II, he settled in Lugano, Switz., but continued to tour and make recordings. His style was described as severe and articulate, yet not without warmth and the most scrupulous regard for the score.
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20581f7272160da656e7a8bec201c3e2 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Bleek | Wilhelm Bleek | Wilhelm Bleek
Wilhelm Bleek, in full Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek, (born March 8, 1827, Berlin—died August 17, 1875, Cape Town), comparative linguist known for his pioneer studies of South African languages as the “Father of Bantu Philology.”
In his doctoral dissertation at the University of Bonn (1851), Bleek attempted to prove a North African origin of the Hottentot language. In about 1855 he went to Natal to study the language and customs of the Xhosa. Before going to Cape Town, he wrote The Languages of Mosambique (1856). The following year he was appointed interpreter to the British governor of Cape Colony, Sir George Grey, and, from about 1860, served as librarian of a valuable collection of books presented to the colony by Grey. Bleek introduced the term “Bantu” to cover a macro-family of African languages. He wrote a number of works, including Handbook of African, Australian and Polynesian Philology, 3 vol. (1858–63); A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages (1862–69); and Reynard the Fox in South Africa; or, Hottentot Fables and Tales (1864).
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ec1b237752e4f850dc687fc70402cb0e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Bockmann | Wilhelm Böckmann | Wilhelm Böckmann
…German architects Hermann Ende and Wilhelm Böckmann were active in Japan from the late 1880s. Their expertise in the construction of government ministry buildings was applied to the growing complex of such structures in the Kasumigaseki area of Tokyo. The now much-altered Ministry of Justice building (1895) is a major…
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184e4d38ebf3bac1d97878436e4eb216 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Bruhn | Wilhelm Bruhn | Wilhelm Bruhn
…taximeter, an instrument invented by Wilhelm Bruhn in 1891 that automatically recorded the distance traveled and/or the time consumed, thus enabling the fare to be accurately measured. The term cab derives from the cabriolet, a two-wheeled, one-horse carriage often let out for hire.
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e3c73209f2f0d36c86a9bf4675d9344a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Canaris | Wilhelm Canaris | Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Canaris, in full Wilhelm Franz Canaris, (born January 1, 1887, Aplerbeck, Westphalia, Germany—died April 9, 1945, Flossenbürg concentration camp, Bavaria), German admiral, head of military intelligence (Abwehr) under the Nazi regime and a key participant in the resistance of military officers to Adolf Hitler.
Having served in the navy during World War I, Canaris was a member of the military tribunal that sentenced the murderers of the German communist theoretician Rosa Luxemburg, and then he allegedly helped one of the condemned officers to escape.
Appointed head of the Abwehr (January 1935), he organized German aid to General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. Believing that the Nazi regime would ultimately destroy traditional conservative values and that its foreign ambitions were dangerous to Germany, he enlisted some of the anti-Hitler conspirators into the Abwehr and shielded their activities. He was transferred to the economic staff of the armed forces (February 1944) after an investigation of the Abwehr by the Schutzstaffel (SS); he remained there until after the abortive assassination attempt against Hitler (July 20, 1944), when he was arrested and executed.
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0fa3e6e120f0461f941a4d1d0cb13174 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Carl-Grimm | Wilhelm Carl Grimm | Wilhelm Carl Grimm
September 20, 1863, Berlin) and Wilhelm Carl Grimm (b. February 24, 1786, Hanau, Hesse-Kassel [Germany]—d. December 16, 1859, Berlin) together compiled other collections of folk music and folk literature, and Jacob in particular did important work in historical linguistics and Germanic philology, which included the formulation of Grimm’s law. They…
…initiated by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. The dictionary was designed to give the etymology and history, illustrated by quotations, of all the words in the (New) High German literary language from the time of Martin Luther (c. 1500) to that of J.W. von Goethe (d. 1832), as well as significant…
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2e9e05e0101f15bf65fa8d1755fb665a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Emmanuel-Freiherr-von-Ketteler | Wilhelm Emmanuel, baron von Ketteler | Wilhelm Emmanuel, baron von Ketteler
Wilhelm Emmanuel, baron von Ketteler, (born Dec. 25, 1811, Münster, Westphalia [Germany]—died July 13, 1877, Burghausen, Bavaria), social reformer who was considered by some to have been Germany’s outstanding 19th-century Roman Catholic bishop.
Ordained a priest in 1844 and appointed bishop of Mainz in 1850, Ketteler attracted national attention by his sermons and writings. He was interested in political and social problems and was a member of the Frankfurt National Assembly (1848) and later of the German Reichstag (1871–72). His concern was for the working class, whose well-being, he proposed, was the church’s responsibility. His opposition to papal infallibility caused him to become one of the leaders of the “inopportunists” (those against the “infallibilists”) at the first Vatican Council (1869–70).
His views on social reform were most comprehensively expressed in his book Die Arbeiterfrage und das Christenthum (1864; “The Labourer Question and Christianity”), which strongly stimulated the interest of German Roman Catholics in social problems. Ketteler’s paramount concern for the need of a Christian foundation supplied the quintessence of his other writings and his sermons. His most important works were edited by Johannes Mumbauer, Wilhelm Emmanuel von Kettelers Schriften (3 vol., 1911; 2nd ed., 1924).
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b1ee0bde49264cc893fb405139bb22d8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Freiherr-von-Knyphausen | Wilhelm, baron von Knyphausen | Wilhelm, baron von Knyphausen
Wilhelm, baron von Knyphausen, (born November 4, 1716, Luxembourg—died December 7, 1800, Kassel, Hesse-Kassel [Germany]), German soldier who after 1777 commanded “Hessian” troops on the British side in the American Revolution.
A lieutenant general with 42 years of military service, Knyphausen went to North America in 1776 as second in command (under General Leopold von Heister) of German mercenary troops in the British service. Following Heister’s recall in 1777, Knyphausen became their commander. He took part in the battles of Fort Washington and Brandywine, Pennsylvania, and Monmouth, New Jersey; Sir Henry Clinton’s absence from New York in 1779–80 left the area under the command of Knyphausen. An able soldier, he carried out the difficult task of holding together the mercenary forces under his command. He returned to Germany in 1782 and became military governor of Kassel.
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f48d32c20099b26ca285768c72db72d4 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Friedemann-Bach | Wilhelm Friedemann Bach | Wilhelm Friedemann Bach
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, (born Nov. 22, 1710, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar—died July 1, 1784, Berlin), eldest son of J.S. and Maria Barbara Bach, composer during the period of transition between Baroque and Rococo styles.
W.F. Bach’s musical instruction was primarily from his father (who wrote for him, when he was ten, the charming Klavier-büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach of keyboard pieces). He also studied the violin. He matriculated at Leipzig University in 1729. In 1733, already composing extensively, he was appointed organist to the Church of St. Sophia in Dresden. In 1746 he moved to the Liebfrauenkirche at Halle. At about this time, or perhaps later, after his father’s death in 1750, he seemed to begin to have personality difficulties, evidenced by excessive drinking and other lapses. After a late marriage in 1751, he became restless and applied unsuccessfully for a change of post in 1753 and 1758. In 1762 he won an appointment to the Darmstadt court but did not take it up. Resigning his old post in Halle in 1764, for 20 years he sought in vain for regular employment. He became touchy and unreliable, and although his talents were never doubted, he imagined that they were. In 1774 he moved to Berlin, where he lived meagrely by giving recitals and teaching.
Of his compositions, keyboard works and cantatas form the larger part; he also composed several symphonies and chamber works and an opera. His music vacillated between the Baroque style of his father and the newer galant, or Rococo, style. His compositions, few for his many years, are often impassioned, often unpredictable in their use of melody, harmony, and rhythm.
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eeb8b58ce4770ac2f658b70f22fd37f3 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Johann-Eugen-Blaschke | Wilhelm Johann Eugen Blaschke | Wilhelm Johann Eugen Blaschke
Wilhelm Johann Eugen Blaschke, (born Sept. 13, 1885, Graz, Austria-Hungary—died March 17, 1962, Hamburg), German mathematician whose major contributions to geometry concerned kinematics and differential and integral geometry.
Blaschke became extraordinary professor of mathematics at the Deutsche Technische Hochschule (German Technical University), Prague, in 1913 and two years later accepted a post at the University of Leipzig. In 1917 he was appointed professor of mathematics at the University of Königsberg. He accepted a professorial post with the University of Hamburg in 1919.
Blaschke discovered kinematic mapping, which later became important to the axiomatic foundations of various geometries, and established it as a fundamental technique in kinematics. He also originated topological differential geometry, the study of invariant differentiable mappings. His more important works include Kreis und Kugel (1916; “Circle and Sphere”); Vorlesungen über Differentialgeometrie, 3 vol. (1921–29; “Lectures on Differential Geometry”); Vorlesungen über Integralgeometrie, 2 vol. (1935–37; “Lectures on Integral Geometry”); Grundlagen von Einsteins Relativitatstheorie (1921–23; “Foundations of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity”); and Analytische Geometrie (1948; “Analytical Geometry”).
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09209beae5aa227cfc88020a77035300 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Junker | Wilhelm Junker | Wilhelm Junker
Wilhelm Junker, in full Johann Wilhelm Junker, (born April 6, 1840, Moscow, Russia—died February 13, 1892, St. Petersburg), Russian explorer of the southern Sudan and Central Africa who determined the course of a major Congo River tributary, the Ubangi River, together with one of its branches, the Uele.
After journeys to Iceland (1869) and Tunis (1873–74), Junker went to Egypt and the Sudan (1875), where from 1876 to 1878 he explored the lower Sobat River and the western tributaries of the White Nile. In 1879 he went to Equatoria, the southernmost province of the Sudan, and spent part of the next several years with its governor, Mehmed Emin Pasha. Junker made ethnographic observations in the country of the Zande, which now lies partly within the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan, and he established the identity of the Ubangi and Uele rivers. Prevented from returning to Europe through the Sudan because of the Mahdist uprising, Junker, carrying Emin’s journals, crossed the heartland of what is now Tanzania and reached Zanzibar in December 1886. He wrote Reisen in Afrika, 1875–86 (1889–91; Travels in Africa).
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2871896025d296ab83492e37ecd71328 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Lehmbruck | Wilhelm Lehmbruck | Wilhelm Lehmbruck
Wilhelm Lehmbruck, (born January 4, 1881, Meiderich, near Duisburg, Germany—died March 25, 1919, Berlin), German sculptor, printmaker, and painter best known for his melancholy sculptures of elongated nudes.
Lehmbruck studied art in Düsseldorf, Germany, first at the School of Arts and Crafts (1895–1901) and then at the Art Academy (1901–07). His early work was academic and conservative; he was strongly influenced by the monumental works of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, as seen in Lehmbruck’s The Bather (1905) and his life-sized Mankind (1909).
In 1910 Lehmbruck moved to Paris, where he executed not only sculptures but also a number of paintings, etchings, and lithographs. The rounded, simplified forms of his sculpture Standing Woman (1910) reveal his new enthusiasm for the calm Classicism of the French sculptor Aristide Maillol. In this sculpture, the idealized face is softly modeled and evokes a sensitive, introspective mood. Lehmbruck’s style became less naturalistic and more psychologically powerful with sculptures such as Kneeling Woman (1911). The harmonious repose of this figure’s angular, elongated limbs and her melancholy facial expression suggest a resigned pessimism, an attitude that characterizes Lehmbruck’s mature works.
At the outbreak of World War I Lehmbruck returned to Germany, where he worked in a hospital. His experiences with wounded and dying soldiers led him to create such poignant works as The Fallen (1915–16) and Seated Youth (1918), which indicate the artist’s state of utter depression. He committed suicide one year later. Although he was not involved in the German Expressionist movement, the emotionalism and elongated features of his sculptures have led critics and historians to associate Lehmbruck with Expressionism.
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1d1c489dfcc5c12d08e2f97df28a4a98 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-M-L-de-Wette | Wilhelm M. L. de Wette | Wilhelm M. L. de Wette
Wilhelm M.L. de Wette, a German biblical scholar, in 1805 established the predominant modern view that Deuteronomy (or its nucleus, or main portion) was found in Josiah’s time and was a distinctive book, separate from the Tetrateuch. He also held that it was composed shortly…
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dcd78841fc5f2fce359fc5a9dfa82063 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Marx | Wilhelm Marx | Wilhelm Marx
Wilhelm Marx, (born Jan. 15, 1863, Cologne, Prussia [Germany]—died Aug. 5, 1946, Bonn, Ger.), German statesman, leader of the Roman Catholic Centre Party, and twice chancellor during the Weimar Republic.
Marx studied law and rose from a judgeship to the presidency of the senate of the Court of Appeal at Berlin (1922). He founded and was first president of the Catholic Schools Organization (Düsseldorf, 1911) and he became president of the People’s Union for Catholic Germany after World War I.
After joining the Centre Party, Marx served as a deputy in the Prussian Landtag (1899–1918) and the Reichstag (1910–32). From 1921 to 1928, he was the party’s chairman and its leader in the Reichstag. He first served as chancellor from November 1923 until December 1924, during which time his government secured the acceptance of the Dawes Plan for war reparations payments. After a period as prime minister of Prussia (February–April 1925), Marx lost his bid for the presidency of Germany to Paul von Hindenburg. In May 1926, he returned as chancellor but resigned in 1928 after the successes of the Social Democrats. In December 1928 Marx resigned from the chairmanship of the Centre Party and withdrew from politics.
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3576e729fa7f6a13e178e8e67839f468 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-von-Grumbach | Wilhelm von Grumbach | Wilhelm von Grumbach
Wilhelm von Grumbach, (born June 1, 1503, Rimpar, near Würzburg [Germany]—died April 18, 1567, Gotha, Saxony), German knight and adventurer who led several attempts by German imperial knights to destroy the power of Germany’s territorial princes. Chiefly known through his own quarrels, the so-called Grumbach feuds, he also tried to regain power for the Ernestine branch of the Saxon ruling house.
About 1540 Grumbach allied himself with Margrave Albert II Alcibiades of Brandenburg, whom he was to serve for more than a decade. Grumbach’s chief ambition, however, was to become owner of his lands, which he held in fief from the bishops of Würzburg. In 1547, at an imperial Diet at Augsburg, he had without success demanded independence from their princes for the Franconian knighthood; and in 1552 Albert and he began to plunder Franconia, until their defeat at Sievershausen the following year enabled the bishop of Würzburg to confiscate Grumbach’s lands. Grumbach obtained an order of restitution from the imperial court of justice, but he was unable to execute it, and in 1558 some of his followers assassinated the bishop. Grumbach fled to France, and after returning to Germany he pleaded his case unsuccessfully before the Diet at Augsburg in 1559.
In the meantime, Grumbach had found a new ally in Duke John Frederick II of Saxe-Weimar, whose father, John Frederick, had been obliged to surrender the electorate of Saxony to the Albertine branch of his family. Grumbach suggested to the duke a general rising of the German imperial knights as a way to recover the electorate. With the duke’s support, Grumbach in 1563 captured Würzburg, plundered the city, and compelled the bishop to restore his lands. Grumbach was consequently outlawed by the Holy Roman emperor Ferdinand I, but John Frederick refused to withdraw his protection of him. Meanwhile, Grumbach planned the assassination of the Saxon elector, Augustus, and both sides made alliances throughout Germany in anticipation of conflict. In 1566 John Frederick was also outlawed by the emperor, and Augustus marched on John Frederick’s capital, Gotha. A mutiny led to the capture of the city by Augustus’ forces, and Grumbach was tortured and executed in the marketplace.
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7f6d5c5ab8e3a1b71ba3cb9cc4ba9e85 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-von-Lenz | Wilhelm von Lenz | Wilhelm von Lenz
It was his biographer Wilhelm von Lenz who first divided Beethoven’s output into three periods, omitting the years of his apprenticeship in Bonn. The first period begins with the completion of the Three Trios for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Opus 1, in 1794, and ends about 1800, the year…
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98776e8a03d22cb963ba77d84a3eb24c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Wieprecht | Wilhelm Wieprecht | Wilhelm Wieprecht
In 1835 Wilhelm Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz of Berlin patented the bass tuba in F, with five valves. Subsequent designs were considerably influenced by the French contrabass saxhorn.
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7841fed76282236ae5c9a74545bb94df | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Windelband | Wilhelm Windelband | Wilhelm Windelband
Its initiator was Wilhelm Windelband, esteemed for his “problems” approach to the history of philosophy. The scholar who systematized this position was his successor Heinrich Rickert, who had come from the tradition of Kuno Fischer. Drawing a parallel between the constraints that logic exerts upon thought and those…
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621c87ddb98021ef385b47eec715a885 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-Wundt | Wilhelm Wundt | Wilhelm Wundt
Wilhelm Wundt, (born August 16, 1832, Neckarau, near Mannheim, Baden [Germany]—died August 31, 1920, Grossbothen, Germany), German physiologist and psychologist who is generally acknowledged as the founder of experimental psychology.
Wundt earned a medical degree at the University of Heidelberg in 1856. After studying briefly with Johannes Müller, he was appointed lecturer in physiology at the University of Heidelberg, where in 1858 he became an assistant to the physicist and physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz. There he wrote Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung (1858–62; “Contributions to the Theory of Sense Perception”).
It was during this period, in 1862, that Wundt offered the first course ever taught in scientific psychology. Until then, psychology had been regarded as a branch of philosophy and, hence, to be conducted primarily by rational analysis. Wundt instead stressed the use of experimental methods drawn from the natural sciences. His lectures on psychology were published as Vorlesungen über die Menschen und Thierseele (1863; “Lectures on the Mind of Humans and Animals”). He was promoted to assistant professor of physiology in 1864.
Bypassed in 1871 for the appointment to succeed Helmholtz, Wundt then applied himself to writing a work that came to be one of the most important in the history of psychology, Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie, 2 vol. (1873–74; 3 vol., 6th ed., 1908–11; Principles of Physiological Psychology). The Grundzüge advanced a system of psychology that sought to investigate the immediate experiences of consciousness, including sensations, feelings, volitions, and ideas; it also contained the concept of apperception, or conscious perception. The methodology prescribed was introspection, or conscious examination of conscious experience.
In 1874 Wundt went to the University of Zürich for a year before embarking on the most productive phase of his career, as professor at the University of Leipzig (1875–1917). There, in 1879, he established the first psychological laboratory in the world, and two years later he founded the first journal of psychology, Philosophische Studien (“Philosophical Studies”). Wundt’s most important later works include Grundriss der Psychologie (1896; “Outline of Psychology”) and Völkerpsychologie, 10 vol. (1900–20; “Ethnic Psychology”).
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460e2b0df11c36bd373fde0934d2cf71 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelm-zu-Wied | Wilhelm zu Wied | Wilhelm zu Wied
…also appointed a German prince, Wilhelm zu Wied, as ruler of Albania. Wilhelm arrived in Albania in March 1914, but his unfamiliarity with Albania and its problems, compounded by complications arising from the outbreak of World War I, led him to depart from Albania six months later. The war plunged…
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948224625c32a3aa9310b1b39e1588ff | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilhelmina-margravine-of-Bayreuth | Wilhelmina | Wilhelmina
Wilhelmina, German in full Wilhelmine Friederike Sophie, (born July 3, 1709, Berlin, Prussia [Germany]—died Oct. 14, 1758, Bayreuth, Upper Franconia), sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia and margravine of Bayreuth (from 1735).
She shared the unhappy childhood of her brother, whose friend and confidante she remained most of her life. She married Frederick, hereditary prince of Bayreuth, in 1731; when he became margrave in 1735, the pair set about making Bayreuth a miniature Versailles. They rebuilt the Bayreuth palace and the Bayreuth opera house, as well as other structures, and founded the University of Erlangen. The Margravine made Bayreuth one of the intellectual centres of Germany, surrounding herself with a little court of wits and artists which gained added prestige from the occasional visits of Voltaire and Frederick the Great. With the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, Wilhelmina’s interests shifted from dilettantism to diplomacy. She acted as eyes and ears for her brother in southern Germany until her death.
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f5409d73257414824b13c7e7f9e3efb6 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Will-Ferrell | Will Ferrell | Will Ferrell
Will Ferrell, in full John William Ferrell, (born July 16, 1967, Irvine, California, U.S.), American comedy actor, writer, and producer known for his impersonations and for his portrayal of dim-witted but endearing characters.
Will Ferrell is an American comedy actor, writer, and producer known for his impersonations and for his portrayal of dim-witted but endearing characters.
Will Ferrell was born in Irvine, California, on July 16, 1967. He grew up in suburban Irvine.
Will Ferrell attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he studied sports journalism. He graduated in 1990.
Will Ferrell was invited to join the television sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live in 1995 and remained a member of the cast until he left in 2002 to focus on a film career. With his manic energy, outlandish gags, and energetic commitment even to a failing joke, Ferrell became a fixture on SNL.
In 2006 Will Ferrell and long-time collaborator Adam McKay launched Gary Sanchez Productions. Through that company they produced several movies in which Ferrell starred, including Step Brothers (2008); the buddy-movie parody The Other Guys (2010); Casa de mi padre (2012; “My Father’s House”), a Spanish-language send-up of Mexican telenovelas; the political satire The Campaign (2012); and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013).
Ferrell grew up in suburban Irvine, California, where he played varsity football and drew laughs for reading the high school’s morning announcements in a variety of voices. He later studied sports journalism at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. After graduating in 1990, he worked as a sports broadcaster on local cable before studying acting and comedy. After a year of training with the Los Angeles improv comedy group the Groundlings, he became a member of the company, and in 1995 he was invited to join the television sketch show Saturday Night Live (SNL).
With his manic energy, outlandish gags, and energetic commitment even to a failing joke, Ferrell became a fixture on SNL. He was well known for his impersonations, notably of game show host Alex Trebek, sportscaster Harry Caray, and U.S. Pres. George W. Bush. While on SNL, Ferrell also appeared in such feature films as the James Bond parody Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997); Dick (1999), a satire of the Watergate scandal; and Zoolander (2001; he later appeared in its 2016 sequel as well), a fashion-industry send-up.
In 2002 Ferrell left SNL to focus on a film career, often collaborating with Adam McKay, a writer and director he had met on SNL. The following year Ferrell was one of the stars in Old School, and he took the lead role in Elf (2003), playing a charmingly naive human raised in Santa’s village who ventures to New York City. Both films were box office successes. He then starred in a string of hit comedies, notably Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) and the NASCAR spoof Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), both of which he cowrote with McKay. In 2005 Ferrell portrayed a Nazi playwright in the musical comedy The Producers, and he played equally outlandish characters in the sports comedies Blades of Glory (2007) and Semi-Pro (2008).
His subsequent film roles included a bumbling scientist in the adventure comedy Land of the Lost (2009) and an alien supervillain in the animated Megamind (2010). Although most of Ferrell’s film work was broadly comic in tone, he occasionally took on more serious roles, including a methodical Internal Revenue Service agent in Stranger than Fiction (2006) and an alcoholic selling his possessions in Everything Must Go (2010), an adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story.
In 2006 Ferrell and McKay launched Gary Sanchez Productions. Through that company they produced several other movies in which Ferrell starred, including the farcical Step Brothers (2008), which they cowrote; the buddy-movie parody The Other Guys (2010); Casa de mi padre (2012; “My Father’s House”), a Spanish-language send-up of Mexican telenovelas; the political satire The Campaign (2012); and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013). The production company was also behind Funny or Die (funnyordie.com), a Web site that first garnered notice with a short video of Ferrell being intimidated by his landlady, a beer-swigging potty-mouthed toddler.
Ferrell voiced a tyrannical businessman in The LEGO Movie (2014), a computer-animated film that used renderings of plastic LEGO toys as the characters and set pieces. He also lent his voice to the sequel, The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019). In the racially charged satire Get Hard (2015), Ferrell played a hedge-fund manager who, after being framed for insider trading, looks to a black employee (Kevin Hart) for assistance on learning how to survive in prison. He played a hapless stepfather whose relationship with his stepchildren is challenged by the arrival of their father (Mark Wahlberg) in Daddy’s Home (2015). In 2017 he reprised the role in Daddy’s Home 2 and also starred with Amy Poehler in The House, about a suburban couple who run an illegal casino in order to pay for their daughter’s college tuition. In Holmes & Watson (2018), Ferrell assumed the role of Sherlock Holmes for the comedic take on Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic tales. His film credits from 2020 included Downhill, a dramedy about a struggling couple on a family vacation, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, in which he starred as an aspiring Icelandic musician.
In 2009 Ferrell made his Broadway debut in the one-man play You’re Welcome America. A Final Night with George W. Bush, which he wrote. The play featured Ferrell’s Bush giving some imaginative reminiscences and defenses of his administration. It earned a Tony Award nomination for special theatrical event and was broadcast on the cable channel HBO at the end of the stage production’s run in March 2009. Ferrell periodically returned to the small screen for guest appearances, notably on several episodes of the sitcoms 30 Rock (in 2010 and 2012) and The Office (in 2011). He was also featured in the comic miniseries The Spoils of Babylon (2014) and The Spoils Before Dying (2015) as a bloviating author and director.
In 2011 he received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
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155c2a31b7566631b85a69ffacab80b9 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willebrord-Snell | Willebrord Snell | Willebrord Snell
Willebrord Snell, Latin-Dutch Willebrordus Snellius, original name Willebrord Snel van Royen, (born 1580?, Leiden, Netherlands—died October 30, 1626, Leiden), astronomer and mathematician who discovered the law of refraction, which relates the degree of the bending of light to the properties of the refractive material. This law is basic to modern geometrical optics.
In 1613 he succeeded his father, Rudolph Snell (1546–1613), as professor of mathematics in the University of Leiden. His Eratosthenes Batavus (1617; “Batavian Eratosthenes”) contains the account of his method of measuring the Earth. The account of Snell’s law of refraction (1621) went unpublished, capturing attention only when the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens related Snell’s finding in Dioptrica (1703).
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3fa59f401fdc1314bf48fd3c28d19c7e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willem-Einthoven | Willem Einthoven | Willem Einthoven
Willem Einthoven, (born May 21, 1860, Semarang, Java, Dutch East Indies—died Sept. 29, 1927, Leiden, Neth.), Dutch physiologist who was awarded the 1924 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of the electrical properties of the heart through the electrocardiograph, which he developed as a practical clinical instrument and an important tool in the diagnosis of heart disease.
Einthoven was graduated in medicine from the University of Utrecht and served as professor of physiology at the University of Leiden from 1886 until his death. In 1903 he devised the first string galvanometer, known as the Einthoven galvanometer; with this instrument he was able to measure the changes of electrical potential caused by contractions of the heart muscle and to record them graphically. He coined the term electrocardiogram for this process. Einthoven recognized differences in the records or tracings obtained from different kinds of heart disease. From 1908 to 1913 he studied the patterns of records of normal heart activity in order to gain precision in recognizing and interpreting deviations.
Einthoven continued to develop electrode arrangements, and the present-day standard limb leads were originally described and used by him. The clinical application of Einthoven’s instrument was pioneered by the British physician Sir Thomas Lewis, with whom Einthoven maintained a long and fruitful correspondence.
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c68e2b4b4fb1544161049d80d806ea96 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willem-Frederik-Hermans | Willem Frederik Hermans | Willem Frederik Hermans
Willem Frederik Hermans, (born Sept. 1, 1921, Amsterdam, Neth.—died April 27, 1995), Dutch satirical novelist who vehemently attacked the ills and hypocrisies of society.
Hermans’ early novels and stories are overcast with dark, disillusioned tones. De tranen der acacia’s (1949; “The Tears of the Acacias”), which features a feckless fighter, satirizes the Dutch Resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II. He returned to the war as a theme for his noted short novel “Het behouden huis” (1952; “The House of Refuge”) and the novel De donkere kamer van Damocles (1958; The Dark Room of Damocles); the latter was filmed as Als twee druppels water (“Like Two Drops of Water”) in 1963. Hermans rejected the possibility of human virtue, seeing the individual as either predator or prey, and characterized his own philosophy as “creative nihilism.”
Hermans, who was a geologist, taught at the University of Groningen from 1953 to 1973 and found subject matter for fiction in his profession. The geologist protagonist of Nooit meer slapen (1966; “Never to Sleep Again”) comes to doubt the existence of scientific truth, and Hermans satirized academic communities in the novels Onder professoren (1975; “Among Professors”) and Uit talloos veel miljoenen (1981; “From Countless Millions”). He also wrote poetry, plays, criticism, and scientific works. A later novel is Au pair (1989).
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9d4161e518e52d5ee6fe4137bc3b04be | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willem-van-de-Velde-the-Elder | Willem van de Velde, the Elder | Willem van de Velde, the Elder
Willem van de Velde, the Elder, (born 1611, Leiden, Neth.—died December 1693, London, Eng.), Dutch marine painter. He sailed with the Dutch fleet and painted its engagements with the English. Settling in England in 1672, he continued to paint marine subjects, often in collaboration with his son, Willem the Younger (1633–1707), who became the foremost marine painter of his time. The latter was appointed court painter by Charles II in 1677 and was commissioned to paint England’s naval battles; many of his works are housed in London’s National Maritime Museum.
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b3c7d0b49e6c331bf23190bf6c83708c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-A-Anders | William A. Anders | William A. Anders
William A. Anders, in full William Alison Anders, (born October 17, 1933, Hong Kong), U.S. astronaut who participated in the Apollo 8 flight (December 21–27, 1968), during which the first crewed voyage around the Moon was made. The astronauts, including Anders, Frank Borman, and James Lovell, remained in an orbit about 70 miles (112 km) above the surface of the Moon for about 20 hours, transmitting television pictures back to Earth and verifying that lunar landmarks could be used for navigation to lunar landing sites. On one of Apollo 8’s orbits of the Moon, Anders took the famous “Earthrise” photograph.
Anders graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1955. He received a commission in the U.S. Air Force and obtained a master’s degree in nuclear engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio, in 1962. In 1963 he was selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the third group of astronauts.
Apollo 8 was Anders’s only spaceflight. Anders resigned from NASA and the Air Force in 1969 to become executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. He served as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission (1973–74) and of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (1974–76); as U.S. ambassador to Norway (1976–77); as general manager of the Nuclear Products Division of General Electric Company (1977–80); as general manager of the Aircraft Equipment Division of General Electric (1980–84); as vice president at Textron (1984–90); and as vice chairman and then chief executive officer at General Dynamics (1990–94).
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4c6d1709ad4816d7f27584e92c33293e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-A-Seiter | William A. Seiter | William A. Seiter
William A. Seiter, (born June 10, 1890, New York City, New York, U.S.—died July 26, 1964, Los Angeles, California), American director who made more than 100 feature films and was especially noted for his musicals and light comedies.
Seiter graduated from the Hudson River Military Academy, and by the early 1910s he was working in Hollywood. He acted in short films, notably playing a Keystone Kop for Mack Sennett. In 1915 Seiter began directing comedy shorts, and he eventually helmed some 20 such films, several of which he also wrote. In 1920 he directed his first feature, The Kentucky General. He subsequently made a number of silent films with actress Laura La Plante; the couple married in 1926 and divorced in 1934. In 1929 Seiter helmed such transitional talkies as Why Be Good?, Synthetic Sin, and Smiling Irish Eyes, all of which starred Colleen Moore. In 1930 he began directing all-sound productions, including Strictly Modern and Sunny, the latter of which was an adaptation of a popular Broadway musical with Marilyn Miller. During this period, Seiter made several Bert Wheeler–Robert Woolsey comedies, notably Caught Plastered and Peach-O-Reno (both 1931). In 1933 Seiter directed Ginger Rogers in both the radio satire Professional Sweetheart and the tearjerker Chance at Heaven; the latter also starred Marian Nixon, whom Seiter married the following year.
In 1933 Seiter had his first major hit with Sons of the Desert, a comedy that is considered by many to be Laurel and Hardy’s best feature film. The director also had success with Roberta (1935), a popular adaptation of the Jerome Kern–Otto A. Harbach musical; it nominally starred Irene Dunne, but arguably the best scenes were those with Rogers and Fred Astaire. Rogers returned for In Person (1935), an amusing satire of the movie industry. Seiter’s credits from 1936 included The Moon’s Our Home, a screwball farce starring Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan, and two of Shirley Temple’s better vehicles, Dimples and Stowaway. He then made the period crime drama This Is My Affair (1937), with Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor. In 1938 Seiter directed the Marx Brothers in Room Service. Based on a Broadway farce, it was the only film in which the script was not written specifically for the popular comedy team, and the results were mixed. The colonial-era drama Allegheny Uprising (1939) was a box-office disappointment, despite the presence of John Wayne and Claire Trevor, who had recently appeared in John Ford’s western classic Stagecoach (1939).
Seiter returned to comedy, directing Deanna Durbin in It’s a Date (1940) and Nice Girl? (1941). His best work of the 1940s was the Fred Astaire–Rita Hayworth musical You Were Never Lovelier (1942). Thereafter Seiter’s projects gradually decreased in importance and star power. Notable, however, was Destroyer (1943), a solid World War II drama with Edward G. Robinson and Glenn Ford, and the romantic comedy A Lady Takes a Chance (1943), starring Wayne and Jean Arthur. Although Little Giant was a bland Abbott and Costello outing, the comedy Lover Come Back (both 1946) featured an entertaining performance by Lucille Ball. Seiter reteamed with Durbin on I’ll Be Yours (1947) and Up in Central Park (1948), but neither matched the success of their earlier efforts. Seiter’s version of One Touch of Venus (1948) was not as humorous as the Broadway hit, despite Ava Gardner’s starring as a mannequin who comes to life for a window dresser (Robert Walker).
After directing the film noir Make Haste to Live (1954), Seiter moved from film to television. He directed episodes of such popular shows as The Millionaire and Cavalcade of America as well as 54 installments of The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna. Seiter retired from directing in 1960.
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be2088600ab420efeb5994f795faea13 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-A-Wheeler | William A. Wheeler | William A. Wheeler
William A. Wheeler, in full William Almon Wheeler, (born June 30, 1819, Malone, New York, U.S.—died June 4, 1887, Malone), 19th vice president of the United States (1877–81) who, with Republican President Rutherford B. Hayes, took office by the decision of an Electoral Commission appointed to rule on contested electoral ballots in the 1876 election.
Wheeler was the son of Almon Wheeler, a lawyer, and Eliza Woodworth. He was a successful lawyer and held several positions in New York state government in the 1840s and ’50s before serving as a member of the United States House of Representatives (1861–63). Returned to Congress in 1875, he was appointed to a committee investigating a disputed election in Louisiana and devised the “Wheeler compromise,” by which governmental control of the state was shared between the Democratic and Republican parties.
He was nominated as vice president in order to lend sectional balance to the ticket, and in his acceptance letter he alluded to the need to end Reconstruction, as Hayes subsequently did. Wheeler ran on a platform favouring administrative integrity, civil service reform, and aid to education in the South. Distracted by health and personal problems—his wife died just prior to the Republican convention in 1876—he retired from public life after his term in office was over.
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3067359c32d090a13ae0d84396bcc970 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Adair | William Adair | William Adair
William Adair of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad fired O.B. Coppage for belonging to a labour union, an action in direct violation of the Erdman Act of 1898, which prohibited railroads engaged in interstate commerce from requiring workers to refrain from union membership as a…
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