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Wiener-Hopf integral equation (mathematics)
...in a limited sense some years before Wiener’s work on cybernetics. In 1931 Wiener had collaborated with an Austrian-born U.S. mathematician, Eberhard Hopf, to solve what is now called the Wiener-Hopf integral equation, an equation that had been suggested in a study of the structure of stars but later recurred in many contexts, including electrical-communication theory, and was seen to......
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Wienerisch (linguistics)
Wienerisch, the Viennese speech and accent, reveals social levels and origins. It also demonstrates that the people of Vienna have in their time been governed by Romans, Italians, Spanish, French, Magyars, and Slavs and have absorbed Turkish and Yiddish words into their German tongue in a way that renders the original unrecognizable. Their speech is in many ways closer to that of their......
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Wieniawski, Henri (Polish violinist and composer)
Polish violinist and composer, one of the most celebrated violinists of the 19th century....
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Wieniawski, Henryk (Polish violinist and composer)
Polish violinist and composer, one of the most celebrated violinists of the 19th century....
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Wienis (Austria)
city and Bundesland (federal state), the capital of Austria. Of the country’s nine states, Vienna is the smallest in area but the largest in population....
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Wien’s law (physics)
Wien’s law of the shift of the radiative power maximum to higher frequencies as the temperature is raised expresses in a quantitative form commonplace observations. Warm objects emit infrared radiation, which is felt by the skin; near T = 950 K a dull red glow can be observed; and the colour brightens to orange and yellow as the temperature is raised. The......
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Wieprecht, Wilhelm (German musician)
...of a straight-built Roman trumpet and was the medieval Latin word for trumpet. Valved bass brass instruments for bands are mentioned as early as 1829, but little is now known about them. 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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Wieringermeer Polder (region, The Netherlands)
...a dam (Afsluitdijk; completed 1932) enclosing the IJsselmeer and the subsequent land reclamation of its rich marine clay, began in 1920, following the plans of engineer-statesman Cornelis Lely. The Wieringermeer Polder (75 square miles [193 square km]), the Northeast (Noordoost) Polder (181 square miles [469 square km]), and the East (Oostelijk) Flevoland Polder (204 square miles [528 square......
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“Wierna rzeka” (work by Żeromski)
...trans. in Adam Gillon and Ludwik Krzyżanowski [eds.], Introduction to Modern Polish Literature), and again in the lyrical novel Wierna rzeka (1912; The Faithful River, filmed 1983). In both the short story and the novel the theme is elaborated by indelible images and by sad, compassionate comments on that national tragedy....
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Wierwille, Victor Paul (American religious leader)
Christian evangelical group founded in 1942 as Vesper Chimes, a radio ministry broadcast from Lima, Ohio, by Victor Paul Wierwille (1916–85). Its current headquarters are in New Knoxville, Ohio; estimates of its membership range from 3,000 to 20,000....
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Wierzyński, Kazimierz (Polish poet)
a member of the group of Polish poets called Skamander....
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Wies (Germany)
...François de Cuvilliés. Among the finest German Rococo pilgrimage churches are the Vierzehnheiligen (1743–72), near Lichtenfels, in Bavaria, designed by Balthasar Neumann, and the Wieskirche (begun 1745–54), near Munich, built by Dominikus Zimmermann and decorated by his elder brother Johann Baptist Zimmermann. G.W. von Knobelsdorff and Johann Michael Fischer also......
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Wiesbaden (Germany)
city, capital of Hesse Land (state), southern Germany. It is situated on the right (east) bank of the Rhine River at the southern foot of the Taunus Mountains, west of Frankfurt am Main and north of Mainz. The settlement was known as a spa (Aquae ...
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Wieschaus, Eric F. (American geneticist)
American developmental biologist who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, with geneticists Edward B. Lewis and Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, for discovering the genetic controls of early embryonic development. Working together with Nüsslein-Volhard, Wieschaus expanded upon the innovative work of Lewis, who lik...
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Wiesel, Elie (American author)
Romanian-born Jewish writer, whose works provide a sober yet passionate testament of the destruction of European Jewry during World War II. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986....
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Wiesel, Eliezer (American author)
Romanian-born Jewish writer, whose works provide a sober yet passionate testament of the destruction of European Jewry during World War II. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986....
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Wiesel, Torsten Nils (Swedish biologist)
Swedish neurobiologist, corecipient with David Hunter Hubel and Roger Wolcott Sperry of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. All three scientists were honoured for their investigations of brain function, Wiesel and Hubel in particular for their collaborative studies of the visual cortex, which is located in the...
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Wiesen (German festival)
annual festival in Munich, Germany, held over a two-week period and ending on the first Sunday in October. The festival originated on October 12, 1810, in celebration of the marriage of the crown prince of Bavaria, who later became King Louis I, to Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The festival concluded five days later with a hor...
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Wiesengrund, Theodor (German philosopher and music critic)
German philosopher who also wrote on sociology, psychology, and musicology....
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Wiesenthal, Simon (Nazi-hunter)
founder and head (1961–2003) of the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna. Wiesenthal was a longtime Nazi-hunter who, with the cooperation of the Israeli, West German, and other governments, tracked down more than 1,000 war criminals....
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Wieser, Friedrich von (Austrian economist)
economist who was one of the principal members of the Austrian school of economics, along with Carl Menger and Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk....
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Wiest, Dianne (American actress)
Other Nominees...
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Więź (Polish journal)
...entered journalism and became prominent among Poland’s liberal young Roman Catholic intellectuals in the mid-1950s. In 1958 Mazowiecki cofounded the independent Catholic monthly journal Więź (“Link”), which he edited until 1981. From 1961 to 1971 he was a member of the Sejm, Poland’s legislative assembly. In the 1970s he forged links with the Wor...
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wife (anthropology)
One of the basic functions of a dowry has been to serve as a form of protection for the wife against the very real possibility of ill treatment by her husband and his family. A dowry used in this way is actually a conditional gift that is supposed to be restored to the wife or her family if the husband divorces, abuses, or commits other grave offenses against her. Land and precious metals have......
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Wife, A (poem by Overbury)
English poet and essayist, victim of an infamous intrigue at the court of James I. His poem A Wife, thought by some to have played a role in precipitating his murder, became widely popular after his death, and the brief portraits added to later editions established his reputation as a character writer....
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Wife for a Moneth, A (play by Fletcher)
...perhaps the best. Each of these is a series of extraordinary situations and extreme attitudes, displayed through intense declamations. The best of these are perhaps The Loyall Subject and A Wife for a Moneth, the latter a florid and loquacious play, in which a bizarre sexual situation is handled with cunning piquancy, and the personages illustrate clearly Fletcher’s tendenc...
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Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, The (work by Chesnutt)
...of Thomas Nelson Page that most readers missed the irony. This and similarly authentic stories of folk life among the North Carolina blacks were collected in The Conjure Woman (1899). The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899) examines colour prejudice among blacks as well as between the races in a manner reminiscent of George W. Cable. The Colonel’...
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Wife of Usher’s Well, The (British ballad)
The finest of the ballads are deeply saturated in a mystical atmosphere imparted by the presence of magical appearances and apparatus. “The Wife of Usher’s Well” laments the death of her children so unconsolably that they return to her from the dead as revenants; “Willie’s Lady” cannot be delivered of her child because of her wicked mother-in-law’s ...
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Wife Wrapped in Wether’s Skin, The (British ballad)
...irate father at his mercy and extorts a dowry from him. With marriage a consummation so eagerly sought in ballads, it is ironical that the bulk of humorous ballads deal with shrewish wives (“The Wife Wrapped in Wether’s Skin”) or gullible cuckolds (“Our Goodman”)....
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WiFi (computing)
A recent standard for wireless Ethernet, known as WiFi, is becoming common for small office and home networks. Using frequencies from 2.4 to 5 gigahertz (GHz), such networks can transfer data at rates from 11 to 54 megabits per second. Early in 2002 another Ethernet-like standard was released. Known as HomePlug, the first version could transmit data at about 8 megabits per second through a......
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Wifred (Catalan count)
However, Asturian leadership did not go unchallenged: King Sancho I Garcés (905–926) began to forge a strong Basque kingdom with its centre at 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......
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WIFU (Canadian organization)
major Canadian professional gridiron football organization, formed in 1956 as the Canadian Football Council, created by the Western Interprovincial Football Union (WIFU) and the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU). Though the IRFU still referred to their sport as rugby football, the member clubs played a gridiron style of football. The WIFU and IRFU became, respectively, the Western and......
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wig
manufactured head covering of real or artificial hair worn in the theatre, as personal adornment, disguise, or symbol of office, or for religious reasons. The wearing of wigs dates from the earliest recorded times; it is known, for example, that the ancient Egyptians shaved their heads and wore wigs to protect themselves from the sun and that the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans also use...
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Wigan (England, United Kingdom)
town and metropolitan borough in the northwestern part of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, historic county of Lancashire, England. It lies along the River Douglas and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The borough includes large industrial and commercial centres such as the towns of Wigan and Leigh, suburban neighbourhoods, and small rural communitie...
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Wigan (district, England, United Kingdom)
town and metropolitan borough in the northwestern part of the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, historic county of Lancashire, England. It lies along the River Douglas and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The borough includes large industrial and commercial centres such as the towns of Wigan and Leigh, suburban neighbourhoods, and small rural communities....
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wigeon (duck)
any of four species of dabbling ducks (family Anatidae), popular game birds and excellent table fare. The European wigeon (Anas, or Mareca, penelope) ranges across the Palaearctic and is occasionally found in the Nearctic regions. The American wigeon, or baldpate (A. americana), breeds in northwestern North America and winters along the U....
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Wiggin, Kate Douglas (American author)
American author who led the kindergarten education movement in the United States....
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Wiggins, David (British philosopher)
...to call “true” those judgments that reflect an appropriate “sensibility” to the relevant circumstances. Accordingly, the philosophers who adopted this approach, notably David Wiggins and John McDowell, were sometimes referred to as “sensibility theorists.” But it remained unclear what exactly makes a particular sensibility appropriate, and how one would...
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Wiggins, J. Russel (American journalist)
American journalist, newspaper editor, and statesman (b. Dec. 4, 1904, Luverne, Minn.—d. Nov. 12, 2000, Brooklin, Maine), helped transform the Washington Post from a relatively obscure newspaper into one that had an influential voice in national affairs; he was an editor at the Post from 1947 to 1968, when he left to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Wiggins se...
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wiggler indicator (measurement instrument)
...measurement, but some gauges show only whether the deviation is within a certain range. They include dial indicators, in which movement of a gauging spindle deflects a pointer on a graduated dial; wiggler indicators, which are used by machinists to centre or align work in machine tools; comparators, or visual gauges; and air gauges, which are used to gauge holes of various types. Very precise.....
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Wigglesworth, Michael (American theologian and writer)
British-American clergyman, physician, and author of rhymed treatises expounding Puritan doctrines....
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Wigglesworth, Sir Vincent Brian (British entomologist)
English entomologist, noted for his contribution to the study of insect physiology. His investigations of the living insect body and its tissues and organs revealed much about the dynamic complexity of individual insects and their interactions with the environment. His Insect Physiology (1934) is often considered the foundation for this branch of entomology....
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Wight, Isle of (island and unitary authority, England, United Kingdom)
island and unitary authority, part of the historic county of Hampshire, lying off the south coast of England, in the English Channel. The island is separated from the mainland by a deep strait known as the Solent. The Isle of Wight is a diamond-shaped island extending 22.5 miles (36 km) from east to west and 13.5 miles (22 km) from north to south. Administrati...
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Wight, James Alfred (Scottish veterinarian)
(JAMES ALFRED WIGHT), Scottish-born veterinarian and writer (b. Oct. 3, 1916, Glasgow, Scotland--d. Feb. 23, 1995, Thirlby, near Thirsk, Yorkshire, England), beginning with the U.S. publication of All Creatures Great and Small (1972), charmed millions of fans around the world with humorous fictionalized reminiscences of his life as a rural veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales, particularly i...
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Wight, Peter B. (American architect)
...Potter, a pupil of Upjohn. The banded and pointed arches of this building suggest the influence of Ruskin. More successful—and controversial—as an exponent of the Ruskinian aesthetic was Peter B. Wight, architect of the National Academy of Design, New York City (1863–65). There the Venetian Gothic mode came into its own. Wight and Potter—and, later, Potter’s b...
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Wightman Cup (tennis trophy)
trophy awarded the winner of women’s tennis matches held annually from 1923 to 1989 between British and American teams. A competition comprised five singles and two doubles matches. The cup itself was donated in 1923 by Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman. The first contest, at Forest Hills, N.Y., on Aug. 11 and 13, 1923, was won by the United States. Matches were played in the Uni...
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Wightman, Hazel Hotchkiss (American athlete)
American tennis player who dominated women’s competition before World War I. Known as the “queen mother of American tennis,” she was instrumental in organizing the Wightman Cup match between British and American women’s teams....
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Wigman, Mary (German dancer)
German dancer, a pioneer of the modern expressive dance as developed in central Europe....
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Wigmore, John Henry (American legal scholar)
American legal scholar and teacher whose 10-volume Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law (1904–05), usually called Wigmore on Evidence, is generally regarded as one of the world’s great books on law....
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“Wigmore on Evidence” (work by Wigmore)
American legal scholar and teacher whose 10-volume Treatise on the Anglo-American System of Evidence in Trials at Common Law (1904–05), usually called Wigmore on Evidence, is generally regarded as one of the world’s great books on law....
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Wigner effect (physics)
...of fast neutrons, suggested in 1942 that the process of energy transfer by collision from neutron to atom might result in important physical and chemical changes. The phenomenon, known as the Wigner effect and sometimes as a “knock on” process, was actually discovered in 1943 by the American chemists Milton Burton and T.J. Neubert and found to have profound influences on......
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Wigner, Eugene Paul (American physicist)
Hungarian-born American physicist, joint winner, with J. Hans D. Jensen of West Germany and Maria Goeppert Mayer of the United States, of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963. He received the prize for his many contributions to nuclear physics, which include his formulation of the law of conservation of parity....
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Wigner, Jeno Pal (American physicist)
Hungarian-born American physicist, joint winner, with J. Hans D. Jensen of West Germany and Maria Goeppert Mayer of the United States, of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1963. He received the prize for his many contributions to nuclear physics, which include his formulation of the law of conservation of parity....
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Wigry, Lake (lake, Poland)
...lakes, marshland, and peat bogs. The North Podlasian Lowland occupies the south-central part of the province. To the north is a portion of the Masurian Lakeland. The largest lake in the province is Lake Wigry (8.5 square miles [22 square km]). Lake Hańcza is the deepest of all Polish lakes (354 feet [108 metres]). The main rivers are the Bug, Narew, and Biebrza. About one-third of the......
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Wigry National Park (park, Poland)
...the oldest in Poland and contains the largest stand of virgin (old-growth) forest in Europe. The Biebrza and Narew national parks both protect wetland areas known for an abundance of wildlife, and Wigry National Park features a popular canoeing route along the Czarna Hańcza River as well as a 17th-century Camaldolese monastery. The main tourist centres of the province are......
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Wigston (district, England, United Kingdom)
borough (district), administrative and historic county of Leicestershire, England. Both Oadby and Wigston, formerly villages lying outside the city of Leicester, have in recent years been engulfed by the outward spread of the city’s suburbs. They lie to the southeast and south, respectively, of the city’s centre. Oadby is almost entirely residential, while Wigston ...
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Wigtown (former county, Scotland, United Kingdom)
historic county at the southwestern tip of Scotland, facing the Irish Sea to the south and the North Channel to the west. It is the western portion of the historic region of Galloway and lies entirely within the Dumfries and Galloway council area....
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Wigtownshire (former county, Scotland, United Kingdom)
historic county at the southwestern tip of Scotland, facing the Irish Sea to the south and the North Channel to the west. It is the western portion of the historic region of Galloway and lies entirely within the Dumfries and Galloway council area....
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wigwam (Native American dwelling)
indigenous North American dwelling characteristic of many Northeast Indian peoples and in more limited use in the Plains, Great Basin, Plateau, and California culture areas. The wickiup was constructed of tall saplings driven into the ground, bent over, and tied together near the top. This dome-shaped framework was covered with large overlapping mats of woven rushes or of bark t...
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Wihtred (king of Kent)
king of Kent who came to the throne in 691 or 692 after a period of anarchy....
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Wii Fit (electronic fitness game)
interactive electronic fitness game released in 2007 by the Nintendo Company Ltd. for their Wii gaming system....
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Wii Sports (electronic game)
electronic game created by Japanese designer Eguchi Katsuya and produced by Nintendo for the 2006 launch of the Nintendo Wii video game console. Wii Sports features five individual games that showcase the Wii’s unique motion-sensitive controller, which translates a player’s actual actions with the controller into actions by a character, or...
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Wiitiko (Algonkian mythology)
Three of the most popular characters in Algonquian folklore are Wiitiko (Windigo), a terrifying cannibalistic giant apt to be encountered in the forest; Tcikapis, a kindly, powerful young hero and the subject of many myths; and Wiskijan (Whiskeyjack), an amusing trickster (see trickster tale). “Wiitiko psychosis” refers to a condition in......
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Wiitiko psychosis
...giant apt to be encountered in the forest; Tcikapis, a kindly, powerful young hero and the subject of many myths; and Wiskijan (Whiskeyjack), an amusing trickster (see trickster tale). “Wiitiko psychosis” refers to a condition in which an individual would be seized by the obsessive idea that he was turning into a cannibal with a compulsive craving for human flesh....
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Wijdenbosch, Jules (president of Suriname)
...Bouterse had retained broad appeal in Suriname; he served as president of the National Democratic Party (Nationale Democratische Partij; NDP) and was widely viewed as the real power behind Jules Wijdenbosch, who was elected president of the country in 1996....
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Wijetunga, Dingiri Banda (Sri Lankan politician)
Sri Lankan politician who brought stability to Sri Lanka as the country’s head of state (May 7, 1993–Nov. 12, 1994) during the crucial period immediately following the assassination on May 1, 1993, of Pres. Ranasinghe Premadasa. Wijetunga joined the United National Party (UNP) in 1946 and twice (1956, 1960) ran unsuccessfully for Parliament before being elected in 1965. He lost his s...
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Wika-K’iraw (Inca leader)
...Inca Roca named Yahuar Huacac as the seventh emperor, ensuring a peaceful succession to the throne. Yahuar Huacac was never very healthy and apparently spent most of his time in Cuzco. His brothers Vicaquirao (Wika-k’iraw) and Apo Mayta (’Apu Mayta) were able military leaders and incorporated lands south and east of Cuzco into the Inca domain. Yahuar Huacac’s principal wife...
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wiki (Web site)
World Wide Web (WWW) site that can be modified or contributed to by users. Wikis can be dated to 1995, when American computer programmer Ward Cunningham created a new collaborative technology for organizing information on Web sites. Using a Hawaiian term meaning “quick,” he called this new software WikiWikiWeb, attracted by its alliteration and also by its matching...
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Wikia, Inc. (American company)
...online enterprises. He extended the wiki model to several other projects, including Wiktionary and Wikinews. In 2004 he cofounded with Angela Beesley the for-profit Wikia, Inc....
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Wikipedia (encyclopaedia)
free, Internet-based encyclopaedia operating under an open-source management style. It is overseen by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia uses a collaborative software known as wiki that facilitates the creation and development of articles. The English-language version of Wikipedia beg...
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WikiWikiWeb (Web site)
World Wide Web (WWW) site that can be modified or contributed to by users. Wikis can be dated to 1995, when American computer programmer Ward Cunningham created a new collaborative technology for organizing information on Web sites. Using a Hawaiian term meaning “quick,” he called this new software WikiWikiWeb, attracted by its alliteration and also by its matching...
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Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Emmo Friedrich Richard Ulrich von (German scholar)
German classical scholar and teacher whose studies advanced knowledge in the historical sciences of metrics, epigraphy, papyrology, topography, and textual criticism....
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Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von (German scholar)
German classical scholar and teacher whose studies advanced knowledge in the historical sciences of metrics, epigraphy, papyrology, topography, and textual criticism....
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Wilander, Mats (Swedish athlete)
...in the 1980s. Borg inspired a new wave of players in Sweden. A sophisticated junior-development system created a group of Swedish players—led by 1982, 1985, and 1988 French Open champion Mats Wilander. Another European country with a long tennis tradition that reached new heights in the 1980s was Czechoslovakia. One of the foremost players and coaches in Europe in the 1920s and ’3...
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wilāyah (North African government)
The country is divided into 24 administrative areas called wilāyāt (provinces; singular wilāyah), each of which is headed by a wālī (governor). Each province is designated by the name of its chief town and is in turn subdivided into numerous units....
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Wilberforce, Samuel (English bishop)
British cleric, an Anglican prelate and educator and a defender of orthodoxy, who typified the ideal bishop of the Victorian era. He was a major figure in the preservation of the Oxford Movement, which sought to reintroduce 17th-century High Church ideals into the Church of England....
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Wilberforce University (university, Wilberforce, Ohio, United States)
private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Wilberforce, Ohio, U.S. It is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Wilberforce, the oldest historically black private college in the United States, is a liberal arts university offering undergraduate programs in business, engineering, sciences, humanities, and other ...
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Wilberforce, William (British politician)
British politician and philanthropist who from 1787 was prominent in the struggle to abolish the slave trade and then to abolish slavery itself in British overseas possessions....
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Wilbrord of Utrecht (Anglo-Saxon missionary)
Anglo-Saxon bishop and missionary, apostle of Friesland, and patron saint of Holland....
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Wilbrord, Saint (Anglo-Saxon missionary)
Anglo-Saxon bishop and missionary, apostle of Friesland, and patron saint of Holland....
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Wilbur, Earl Morse (American theologian)
The Unitarian theologian Earl Morse Wilbur (1866–1956) advanced the thesis, now widely accepted, that the history of Unitarianism in Poland, Transylvania, England, and America gains unity from certain common themes. These themes are freedom of religious thought rather than required agreement with creeds or confessions, reliance not on tradition or external authority but on the use of......
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Wilbur, John (American religious leader)
...presiding, gave more attention to creeds and scripture rather than concentrating on the Inner Light, and developed more active social and mission programs. A reaction to this movement was led by John Wilbur, a Friends minister who stressed traditional Friends teachings and mode of worship. This reaction led to further schism and the forming of Wilburite yearly meetings....
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Wilbur, Richard (American poet)
American poet associated with the New Formalist movement....
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Wilbur, Richard Purdy (American poet)
American poet associated with the New Formalist movement....
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Wilburite (religious group)
...A reaction to this movement was led by John Wilbur, a Friends minister who stressed traditional Friends teachings and mode of worship. This reaction led to further schism and the forming of Wilburite yearly meetings....
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Wilbye, John (English composer)
English composer, one of the finest madrigalists of his time....
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Wilchin, Paul (American ventriloquist)
American ventriloquist and voice-over artist (b. Dec. 21, 1922, New York, N.Y.—d. June 24, 2005, Moorpark, Calif.), was a familiar presence on television in the 1950s and ’60s, appearing first with his wisecracking dummy Jerry Mahoney and later adding the dim-witted puppet Knucklehead Smiff to his act. Beginning in 1968, however, he gained additional renown as the voice of characters...
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Wilcox, Desmond John (British director)
British television executive and documentarian (b. May 21, 1931, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, Eng.—d. Sept. 6, 2000, London, Eng.), made memorable television documentaries noted for their humanitarian aspects, among them Americans (1979) and, especially, The Boy David (1983), part of his BBC series The Visit (1982–91). Over 10 years’ time—on t...
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Wilcox, Ella Wheeler (American poet and journalist)
American poet and journalist who is perhaps best remembered for verse tinged with an eroticism that, while rather oblique, was still unconventional for her time....
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Wilcox, Harvey (American Prohibitionist)
...The first house in Hollywood was an adobe building (1853) on a site near Los Angeles, then a small city in the new state of California. Hollywood was laid out as a real-estate subdivision in 1887 by Harvey Wilcox, a prohibitionist from Kansas who envisioned a community based on his sober religious principles. Real-estate magnate H.J. Whitley, known as the “Father of Hollywood,”......
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Wilcox, Marjorie (British actress)
British actress and dancer, known for her work in stage plays, musicals, and films. Her motion-picture career was guided by her husband, producer-director Herbert Wilcox....
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Wilcox, Thomas (British clergyman)
Puritan manifesto, published in 1572 and written by the London clergymen John Field and Thomas Wilcox, that demanded that Queen Elizabeth I restore the “purity” of New Testament worship in the Church of England and eliminate the remaining Roman Catholic elements and practices from the Church of England. Reflecting wide Presbyterian influence among Puritans, the admonition advocated.....
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Wilcoxon signed-rank test (statistics)
The Wilcoxon signed-rank test can be used to test hypotheses about two populations. In collecting data for this test, each element or experimental unit in the sample must generate two paired or matched data values, one from population 1 and one from population 2. Differences between the paired or matched data values are used to test for a difference between the two populations. The Wilcoxon......
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Wilcy (people)
By the early 9th century the Polabs were organized into two confederations, or principalities, the Obodrites and the Lutycy, or Wilcy. The many Lutycy tribes, of which the Ratarowie and Stodoranie (Hawolanie) were the most important, were subdued by Lothar of Saxony and Albert the Bear of Brandenburg in the 12th century. The other Polab groups were also subjugated by the Germans in the......
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Wilczek, Frank (American physicist)
American physicist who, with David J. Gross and H. David Politzer, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004 for discoveries regarding the strong force—the nuclear force that binds together quarks (the smallest building blocks of matter) and holds together the nucleus of the atom....
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Wild 2 (astronomy)
...filtered from large volumes of melted polar ice. Spacecraft missions have been developed to retrieve dust particles directly from space. The U.S. Stardust spacecraft, launched in 1999, flew past Comet Wild 2 in early 2004, collecting particles from its coma for return to Earth. In 2003 Japan’s space agency launched its Hayabusa spacecraft to return small amounts of surface material,......
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wild allspice (plant)
(Lindera benzoin), deciduous, dense shrub of the laurel family (Lauraceae), native to eastern North America. It occurs most often in damp woods and grows about 1.5–6 m (about 5–20 feet) tall. The alternate leaves are rather oblong, but wedge-shaped near the base, and 8–13 cm (3–5 inches) long. The small, yellow, unisexual flowers are crowded in small, nearly stal...
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wild animal act (circus)
The introduction of wild animals to the circus dates from about 1831, when the French trainer Henri Martin, performing in Germany, presumably entered a cage with a tiger. He was soon followed by the American trainer Isaac A. Van Amburgh, reputedly the first man to stick his head into a lion’s mouth, who in 1838 took his act to England and so fascinated the young Queen Victoria that she......
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Wild Animals I Have Known (work by Seton)
...as the basis for his animal stories. His artistic training enabled him to earn a living for a time as an illustrator of wild animals. He collected his stories into his most popular book, Wild Animals I Have Known (1898). He continued to write such books into the 1940s....
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wild ass (mammal)
either of two species belonging to the horse family, Equidae, especially the African wild ass, Equus asinus (also, Equus africanus), often referred to as the true ass. The related Asiatic wild ass, often called the half-ass (E. hemionus), is usually known by the local names of its various races: e.g., kulan (E. h. hemionus, Mongolia); kiang (...
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