…the chemical element of atomic number 74, a hard steel-grey metal of the transition series. It has a very high melting point (3410°C) and is used to make electric light filaments…
…the SI unit of power, equivalent to one joule per second, corresponding to the rate of consumption of energy in an electric circuit where the potential difference is one volt and the current one ampere…
…black and white (used especially to describe printing, film, photographs, or television pictures)…
…a heavy charged elementary particle considered to transmit the weak interaction between other elementary particles…
…(1863–1943), English short-story writer; full name William Wymark Jacobs. He is noted for tales of the macabre such as ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ (1902)…
…(1907–73), British-born poet, resident in America from 1939; full name Wystan Hugh Auden. Look, Stranger! (1936) and Spain (1937, on the Civil War) secured his position as a leading left-wing poet. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Anxiety (1947)…
…(1916–2006), South African statesman, Prime Minister 1978–84, State President 1984-9; full name Pieter Willem Botha. An authoritarian leader, he continued to enforce apartheid but in response to pressure introduced limited reforms; his resistance to more radical change ultimately led to his fall from power…
…(1848–1915), English cricketer; full name William Gilbert Grace. In a first-class career that lasted until 1908, he made 126 centuries, scored 54,896 runs, and took 2,864 wickets. He twice captained England in Test matches against Australia (1880 and 1882)…
…(1873–1958), American blues musician; full name William Christopher Handy. He set up a music-publishing house in 1914, and his transcriptions of traditional blues helped establish the pattern of the modern twelve-bar blues…
…(1865–1939), Irish poet and dramatist; full name William Butler Yeats. His play The Countess Cathleen (1892) and his collection of stories The Celtic Twilight (1893) stimulated Ireland’s theatrical, cultural, and literary revival. Notable poetry: The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair (1929). Nobel Prize for Literature (1923)…
…(1871–1940), Welsh poet; full name William Henry Davies. He emigrated to the US and lived as a vagrant and labourer, writing The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp (1908) about his experiences…
…(1880–1946), American comedian; born William Claude Dukenfield. Having made his name as a comedy juggler he became a vaudeville star, appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies revues between 1915 and 1921. Notable films: The Bank Dick (1940)…
…(1858–1933), English lexicographer and grammarian; full name Henry Watson Fowler. He compiled the first Concise Oxford Dictionary (1911) with his brother F. G. Fowler, and wrote the moderately prescriptive guide to style and idiom, Modern English Usage, first published in 1926…
…(1888–1931), German film director; born Frederick Wilhelm Plumpe. His revolutionary use of cinematic techniques to record and interpret human emotion paralleled the expressionist movement in art and drama. Notable films: Nosferatu (1922), Der letzte Mann (1924), and Sunrise (1927), which won three Oscars…
…(1911–97), English author; full name Wilbert Vere Awdry. He was the creator of the Thomas the Tank Engine series of children’s books…
…(1877–1956), US politician; full name Alben William Barkley. He served as Harry S. Truman’s vice president 1949–53. He also served in the US Senate 1927–49, 1955–56…
…(b.1946), American Republican statesman, 43rd President of the US 2001–2009; full name George Walker Bush. He is the son of George Bush. One of his first acts as President was to launch a ‘War on Terror’ against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon; he also ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, maintaining that Saddam Hussein was developing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons…
…(b.1936), South African statesman, State President 1989–94; full name Frederik Willem de Klerk. As State President he freed Nelson Mandela in 1990, lifted the ban on membership of the ANC, and opened the negotiations that led to the first democratic elections in 1994. Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela (1993)…
…(1875–1948), American film director; full name David Lewelyn Wark Griffith. A pioneer in film, he is responsible for introducing many cinematic techniques, including flashback and fade-out. Notable films: The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), and Broken Blossoms (1919)…
…(1865–1948), English novelist; full name Alfred Edward Woodley Mason. Notable works: The Four Feathers (adventure story, 1902) and Musk and Amber (historical novel, 1942)…
…(1935–2003), American critic, born in Palestine; full name Edward Wadi Said. He came to public notice with Orientalism (1978), a study of Western attitudes towards Eastern culture. Other notable works: Culture and Imperialism (1993)…
…(1775–1851), English painter; full name Joseph Mallord William Turner. He made his name with landscapes and stormy seascapes, becoming increasingly concerned with depicting the power of light by the use of primary colours, often arranged in a swirling vortex. Notable works: Rain, Steam, Speed (1844); The Fighting Téméraire (1838)…
…(1836–1911), English dramatist; full name William Schwenck Gilbert. He is best known as a librettist who collaborated on light operas with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. Notable works: HMS Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), and The Mikado (1885)…
…(1912–89), US historian and writer; full name Barbara Wertheim Tuchman. Her many works include The Guns of August (1962), Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911–45 (1971), A Distant Mirror (1978), and The First Salute (1988)…
…(1868–1963), American writer, sociologist, and political activist; full name William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. He was an important figure in campaigning for equality for black Americans and co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909…
…(1908–2000), American philosopher and logician. A radical critic of modern empiricism, Quine took issue with the philosophy of language proposed by Rudolf Carnap, arguing that ‘no statement is immune from revision’ and that even the principles of logic themselves can be questioned and replaced…
…(1874–1965), British novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist, born in France; full name William Somerset Maugham. Notable works: Of Human Bondage (novel, 1915), The Moon and Sixpence (novel, 1919), East of Suez (play, 1922), and Cakes and Ale (novel, 1930)…
…an Asian flowering shrub of the honeysuckle family, which has pink, red, or yellow flowers and is a popular ornamental…
…(circa 1823–96) US photographer. The publication of his Gallery of Illustrious Americans (1850) established him as a leading US photographer, and his photographs of the Union armies taken during the Civil War became the basis for his National Photographic Collection…
…(1770–1831), German philosopher. In his Science of Logic (1812–16) Hegel described the three-stage process of dialectical reasoning, on which Marx based his theory of dialectical materialism. He believed that history, the evolution of ideas, and human consciousness all develop through idealist dialectical processes as part of the Absolute or God coming to know itself…
…a sunflowerlike composite plant of the western US, with large oval leaves…
…a sunflowerlike composite plant of the western US, with large oval leaves…
…(1852–1916), Scottish chemist, discoverer of the noble gases. He first discovered argon, helium, and (with the help of M. W. Travers, 1872–1961) neon, krypton, and xenon, determining their atomic weights and places in the periodic table. In 1910, with Frederick Soddy and Sir Robert Whytlaw-Gray (1877–1958), Ramsay identified the last noble gas, radon. Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1904)…
…(1916–2000), Sinhalese stateswoman, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka 1960-5, 1970-7, and 1994–2000; full name Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike. The world’s first woman Prime Minister, she succeeded her husband, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, after his assassination…
