Columbia Encyclopedia

(Encyclopedia) Merwin, W. S. (William Stanley Merwin), 1927–2019, American poet and translator, b. New York City. After graduating from Princeton in 1948, he traveled in Europe, working as a tutor and studying Rom...

(Encyclopedia) Sebald, W. G. (Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald), 1944–2001, German novelist, grad. Freiburg Univ. (1965). Sebald's novels are dense, elegiac, and meditative. They mingle fiction with history and th...

(Encyclopedia) Kelley, Hall Jackson, 1790–1874, American propagandist for the settlement of Oregon, b. Northwood, N.H. A schoolmaster in Boston (1818–23) and later a railroad surveyor in Maine, he founded (1829)...

(Encyclopedia) Murnau, Friedrich W. frēˈdrĭkh mo͝orˈnou [key], 1889–1931, German film director, b. as Friedrich W. Plumpe. He began directing films in Germany in 1919 and went to Hollywood in 1927. Murnau's f...

(Encyclopedia) Post, C. W. (Charles William Post), 1854–1914, American food manufacturer and developer of breakfast cereals, b. Springfield, Ill. He worked (1872–86) selling agricultural machines and invented a ...

(Encyclopedia) Mohammed, W. Deen (Warith Deen Mohammed), 1933–2008, American Muslim leader, b. Detroit as Wallace Dean Muhammad. The son of Nation of Islam (Black Muslim) leader Elijah Muhammad, he attended religi...

(Encyclopedia) Handy, W. C. (William Christopher Handy), 1873–1958, American songwriter and band leader, b. Florence, Ala. Largely self-taught, Handy began his career as a cornet player in a minstrel show in 1896,...

(Encyclopedia) Coney Island kōˈnē [key], beach resort, amusement center, and neighborhood of S Brooklyn borough of New York City, SE N.Y., on the Atlantic Ocean. The tidal creek that once separated the island fro...

(Encyclopedia) Moerner, W. E. (William Esco Moerner), 1953–, American physical chemist, b. Pleasanton, Calif., Ph.D. Cornell, 1982. Moerner worked at the IBM Almaden Research Center from 1981 to 1995 and at the Un...

(Encyclopedia) Smith, W. Eugene (William Eugene Smith), 1918–78, American photojournalist, b. Wichita, Kan. Smith is considered one of the principal masters of modern photojournalism. The distorted newspaper cover...