Katherine Applegate, who also writes as K. A. Applegate, has authored more than one hundred books. While her publications include romances for the Harlequin line, she has aimed most of her writing at middle-grade readers, penning some titl...

Political leader Kumaraswami Kamaraj (1903-1975) rose from the next-to-lowest rung in the caste system of India to become president of the all-powerful Congress party. He was known simply as Kamaraj, now used as his surname. The low caste ...

Kenneth Colin Irving (1899-1992) was an industrialist who built a cluster of interrelated regional businesses into a massive empire that straddled virtually every aspect of his native New Brunswick's economy. He became the "Paul Bunyan of ...

Few authors have achieved as many levels of success as has Roger Kahn. When his New York Herald Tribune salary reached $10,000 a year in 1955, he was the highest-paid and most-sought-after baseball writer in the city. Turning to freelance ...

Kaik Takeshi was an extraordinary writer who expressed his thoughts with sincerity, discipline, and rigorous honesty. As a leading literary figure from the late 1950s until his death in 1989, he was a prolific novelist, short-story writer,...

In her review of Kaja Silverman's The Threshold of the Visible World (1996), feminist theorist Mieke Bal observed that Silverman "is in the habit of raising questions that remain unanswered, and devoting her next book to them." Silverman's...

Vjekoslav Kaleb is a towering figure among contemporary Croatian writers, one whose impressive body of work includes fifty-seven short stories and novellas, three novels (one of which was rewritten under a different title), screenplays, po...

David Kalakaua (1836-1891) was a Hawaiian King who was a staunch supporter of native Hawaiian civil rights. His opposition to the white business community led to a rebellion forcing him to sign a new constitution relinqushing his powers as...

Natalie Kalmus (1883-1965) played a key role in the development and promotion of the Technicolor film process. Kalmus was born Natalie Mabelle Dunfee in 1883 (some sources say 1878 or 1892) in Norfolk, Virginia, the daughter of George Kays...

Kamehameha I (ca. 1758-1819), first king of the Hawaiian Islands, conquered and united the islands. He became a statesman who knew how to keep the best of the old ways while adopting the best of the new. Born in Kohala, Hawaii, of a family...

Vasilii Vasil'evich Kamensky is best known for his work in 1913-1914 with the Futurist group "Hylaea," but his creative output spans four decades. Kamensky was involved in significant literary events throughout his career and knew many peo...

Kamo no Chmei (or Nagaakira) claims an eminent place in the history of Japanese letters despite his relatively small oeuvre. He was a respected poet at a fairly early age; wrote a valuable treatise on poetry, poetics, and poetic lore; and ...

John Kane (1860-1934) was a Scottish-born American primitive painter who specialized in landscapes and scenes of the industrial environment in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. John Kane was born in West Calder, Scotland, and as a teen-...

The Chinese emperor K'ang-hsi (1654-1722) was a man of enormous personal vitality and exceptional administrative and military ability. He was one of the greatest emperors of the Ch'ing period. Born on May 4, 1654, K'ang-hsi was the third s...

Yoram Kaniuk has been praised at home and abroad as, in the words of American reviewer Joshua Henkin, "one of Israel's pre-eminent novelists" (The New York Times, 4 June 1989). Kaniuk was born in Tel Aviv on 2 May 1930, one of a generation...

Kanze Kjir Nobumitsu is one of the most important n artists in the history of Japanese theater. He wrote and edited many n plays, a third of which are still performed. Besides performing, Nobumitsu was also an important figure in the Kanze...

Jaan Kaplinski is one of the leading poets and essayists in contemporary Estonian literature; his works have gained recognition abroad and have been translated into several languages. Kaplinski belongs to the generation that entered the li...

Kara Dalkey's intricate fantasy fiction novels have attracted a devoted readership due to their blend of intriguing characters, otherworldly elements, and genuine period detail. Hailed by critics as a consummate storyteller, Dalkey weaves ...

Kareem Abdul Jabbar (born 1947), formerly Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. was one of the greatest basketball players to play the game at the high school, college, and professional ranks. Kareem Abdul Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor,...

Isak Dinesen was the pseudonym used by the Danish author Karen Dinesen Blixen-Finecke (1885-1962). Her stories place her among Denmark's greatest authors. Isak Dinesen was born on April 17, 1885, the daughter of a wealthy landowner, advent...

Author Karen Hesse has garnered an impressive list of awards for her work, including a prestigious Newbery award, the Scott O'Dell Award, and two Christopher awards. In 2002 she added to those with a MacArthur Foundation "Genius" fellowshi...

Karen Silkwood (1946-1974), a nuclear plant laborer who died while investigating safety violations made by her employer, is viewed as a martyr by anti-nuclear activists. Her story was made into a film, Silkwood, in 1983. On the night of No...

Karin Boye's best-known work is Kallocain: Roman från 2000-talet (Kallocain: A Novel from the 2000s), a dystopian futuristic novel she published in 1940, the year before her death. Portraying life in a state that controls almost ever...

The Swiss-born solid-state physicist Karl Alexander Müller (born 1927) spent years at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory studying the properties of a class of compounds called perovskites. In collaboration with J. Georg Bednorz, he be...

Prince Karl August von Hardenberg (1750-1822) served as chief minister of Prussia. He presided over the recovery of Prussia after the collapse of 1806 and guided the state's diplomacy. Karl August von Hardenberg was born in Essenrode on Ma...