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 ...

Clements Kadalie (ca. 1896-1951) was South Africa's first black national trade union leader. He headed the Industrial and Commercial Worker's Union (ICU) from its inception in 1919 until his resignation as national secretary in 1929. The m...

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...

Behzad or Bihzad (died ca. 1530) is considered the most important painter of Persia in a period when the country produced many great painters. Unfortunately, important as Behzad was, there is no record of his birth or death and very little...

Kushan ruler Kanishka (flourished ca. 78-ca. 103 A.D.) controlled an empire covering most of India, Iran, and central Asia in the first and second centuries. With his conversion to and official support of Mahayana Buddhism, the religion un...

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...

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...

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...

The Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), a giant in the history of Christian thought, initiated what became the dominant movement in Protestant theology up to the present day. Karl Barth was born on May 10, 1886, in Basel, t...

The American political scientist Karl Wolfgang Deutsch (1912-1992) was ranked among the foremost social scientists of the post-World War II era. Few, if any, other thinkers in this field attained his level of intellectual originality, prof...

The Estonian anatomist and embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) was the first to describe the mammalian ovum. He also developed the germ-layer theory, which became the basis for modern embryology. Karl Ernst von Baer was born in Pi...

The German architect, painter, and designer Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781-1841) was one of the most important and influential architects of his time. He was equally at home with the medieval and the classical tradition. Karl Friedrich Schi...

Karl Jansky was not an astronomer, but a radio engineer who inadvertently made an important contribution to astronomical science. He was born in Oklahoma in 1905 and studied at the University of Wisconsin. He took a job with Bell Telephone...

The German philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) wrote important works on psychopathology, systematic philosophy, and historical interpretation. Karl Jaspers was born in Oldenburg, close to the North Sea coast, on Feb. 23, 1883. His father ...

German-French designer of high fashion Karl Lagerfeld (born 1938) won international fame for his work with several Parisian style houses. Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld was born on September 10, 1938, in Hamburg, Germany. His father was S...

The American neuropsychologist Karl Spencer Lashley (1890-1958) demonstrated relationships between animal behavior and the size and location of brain injuries, summarizing his findings in terms of the concepts of equipotentiality and mass ...

The German philosopher, radical economist, and revolutionary leader Karl Marx (1818-1883) founded modern "scientific" socialism. His basic ideas--known as Marxism--form the foundation of socialist and communist movements throughout the wor...

The Russian diplomat Count Karl Robert Nesselrode (1780-1862) served as minister of foreign affairs from 1814 to 1856. Karl Robert Nesselrode was born on Dec. 14, 1780, in Lisbon, Portugal, where his father was Russian ambassador. Young Ka...

Karl Polanyi (1886-1964) was a Hungarian economic historian. His view of laissez-faire capitalism as a fleeting episode in history and of a new world economy as having evolved from it led to better understanding of nonmarket economies. Bor...

The Russian Communist leader and publicist Karl Bernardovich Radek (1885-1939) is best known for his brilliant and acerbic polemics. He was an outstanding apostle of internationalism. Karl Radek was born Karl Sobelsohn in Lvov (then in Aus...

The Austrian statesman and president Karl Renner (1870-1950) provided his nation with vigorous and able leadership after both world wars. Karl Renner was born on Dec. 14, 1870, the eighteenth and last child of impoverished peasants in the ...