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Widener University ... Wilczek, Frank
Widener University
private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Chester, Pennsylvania, U.S. It comprises the College of Arts and Sciences and schools of Law, Hospitality Management, Human Service Professions, Engineering, Nursing, and Business Administration. More than 50 undergraduate majors are offered. The ...
Widener, George D.
U.S. financier, breeder, owner and racer of Thoroughbred horses.
Widener, Peter A.B.
American transportation magnate and philanthropist.
Widmann, Joseph Viktor
Swiss writer, editor, and critic.
Widmanstatten pattern
lines that appear in some iron meteorites when a cross section of the meteorite is etched with weak acid. The pattern is named for Alois Josep Widmanstatten, a Viennese scientist who discovered it in 1808. It represents a section through ...
Widnes
town in the unitary authority of Halton, historic county of Lancashire, England. It is situated on the north bank of the River Mersey at its lowest bridging point and on the southern periphery of the Liverpool metropolitan region. The modern ...
Widor, Charles-Marie
French organist, composer, and teacher.
Widsith
Old English poem, probably from the 7th century, that is preserved in the Exeter Book, a 10th-century collection of Old English poetry. "Widsith" is an idealized self-portrait of a scop (minstrel) of the Germanic heroic age who wandered widely and ...
Wied, Gustav
Danish dramatist, novelist, and satirist chiefly remembered for a series of what he called satyr-dramas.
Wied-Neuwied, Maximilian, Prinz zu
German aristocratic naturalist, ethnographer, and explorer whose observations on a trip to the American West in the 1830s provide valuable information about the Plains Indians at that time.
Wieland, Christoph Martin
poet and man of letters of the German Rococo period whose work spans the major trends of his age, from rationalism and the Enlightenment to classicism and pre-Romanticism.
Wieland, Heinrich Otto
German chemist, winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his determination of the molecular structure of bile acids.
Wielkopolskie
wojewodztwo (province), west-central Poland. One of 16 provinces created in 1999 when Poland underwent administrative reorganization, it is bordered by the provinces of Zachodniopomorskie to the northwest, Pomorskie and Kujawsko-Pomorskie to the northeast, Lodzkie to the east, ...
Wielopolski, Aleksander, Hrabia, Margrabia Gonzaga Myszkowski
Polish statesman who undertook a program of major internal reforms coupled with full submission to Russian domination in order to gain maximum national autonomy.
Wieman, Carl E.
American physicist who, with Eric A. Cornell and Wolfgang Ketterle, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001 for creating a new ultracold state of matter, the so-called Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).
Wien, Wilhelm
German physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1911 for his displacement law concerning the radiation emitted by the perfectly efficient blackbody (a surface that absorbs all radiant energy falling on it).
Wiener Neustadt
city, Niederosterreich Bundesland (federal state), northeastern Austria. It lies near the Leitha River south of Vienna. Founded in 1194 by the Babenberg duke Leopold V, it was chartered in 1277 and had a mint at that time. It was most ...
Wiener, Norbert
American mathematician who established the science of cybernetics. He attained international renown by formulating some of the most important contributions to mathematics in the 20th century.
Wieniawski, Henryk
Polish violinist and composer, one of the most celebrated violinists of the 19th century.
Wierzynski, Kazimierz
a member of the group of Polish poets called Skamander.
Wiesbaden
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. ...
Wieschaus, Eric F.
American developmental biologist who shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, with geneticists Edward B. Lewis and Christiane Nusslein-Volhard (qq.v.), for discovering the genetic controls of early embryonic development. Working together with Nusslein-Volhard, Wieschaus expanded upon the innovative ...
Wiesel, Elie
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.
Wiesel, Torsten Nils
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 ...
Wiesenthal, Simon
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.
Wieser, Friedrich von
economist who was one of the principal members of the Austrian school of economics, along with Carl Menger and Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk.
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 ...
Wigan
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 ...
wigeon
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 ...
Wiggin, Kate Douglas
American author who led the kindergarten education movement in the United States.
Wigglesworth, Michael
British-American clergyman, physician, and author of rhymed treatises expounding Puritan doctrines.
Wigglesworth, Sir Vincent
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 ...
Wight, Isle of
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 ...
Wightman Cup
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 (q.v.). ...
Wightman, Hazel Hotchkiss
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.
Wigman, Mary
German dancer, a pioneer of the modern expressive dance as developed in central Europe.
Wigmore, John Henry
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 ...
Wigner, Eugene Paul
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, ...
Wigtownshire
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 ...
wigwam
American Indian dwelling, characteristic of the Algonquian-speaking nomadic tribes of what is now the northeastern United States. The wigwam was constructed of tall saplings driven into the ground, bent over, and tied together near the top. This basic structure was ...
Wihtred
king of Kent who came to the throne in 690 after a period of anarchy.
wiki
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 ...
Wikipedia
free, Internet-based encyclopaedia operating under an open-source management style. Wikipedia uses a collaborative software known as wiki that facilitates the creation and development of articles. The English-language version of Wikipedia began in 2001, and ...
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Ulrich von
German classical scholar and teacher whose studies advanced knowledge in the historical sciences of metrics, epigraphy, papyrology, topography, and textual criticism.
Wilberforce University
private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Wilberforce, Ohio, U.S. It is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Wilberforce is a liberal arts university offering undergraduate programs in business, engineering, sciences, humanities, and other areas. All students must participate ...
Wilberforce, Samuel
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 ...
Wilberforce, William
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.
Wilbur, Richard
American poet associated with the New Formalist movement.
Wilbye, John
English composer, one of the finest madrigalists of his time.
Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
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.
Wilczek, Frank
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 ...
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