W. Averell Harriman (1891-1986), American industrialist and financier, had a distinguished second career as a top-level diplomatic negotiator for five Democratic presidents. He was governor of New York for one term. Harriman was born in 18...

The African American songwriter William Christopher Handy (1873-1958), known as the father of the blues, was the first person to notate and publish blues songs. He wrote over 60 blues, spirituals, and popular tunes. On Nov. 16, 1873, W. C....

W. H. Auden was a major English poet, probably the most important English-speaking poet born in the twentieth century. Noted especially for native lyrical gifts and highly developed technical expertise, he also displayed wide reading and a...

A World War II refugee, Werner Michael Blumenthal (born 1926) used his academic and business skills to reach the highest levels of American government, industry, and banking. W. Michael Blumenthal, one of two children of Ewald and Rose Val...

In a career spanning more than sixty years, W. Somerset Maugham wrote a handful of novels which are still studied as modernist works. His ear for language, the use of actual—sometimes grim—experience transformed into fictional ...

Wade Hampton III (1818-1902) was a Confederate general, South Carolina governor, and U.S. senator. In the 1880s he dominated politics in his native state. Wade Hampton III was descended from a prominent South Carolina family. Born on March...

Wladyslaw Sikorski (1881-1943) played a major political and military role in the history of Poland. He founded a secret nationalist organization, guided the modernization of the army, and led a government-in-exile when Poland was invaded b...

Waldeyer-Hartz was born in Hehlen, Germany, on October 6, 1836. He began his college education in the natural sciences at Göttingen in 1856, but later moved to Greifswald and eventually to Berlin to complete his studies. Under the inf...

An American photographer, Walker Evans (1903-1975) was best known for his photographs of American life between the world wars. Everyday objects and people--the urban and rural poor, abandoned buildings, storefronts, street signs, and the l...

U.S. sports official, university chancellor, educator, and track coach, LeRoy Tashreau Walker (born 1918) became the first African American elected to serve as president and chief executive officer of the United States Olympic Committee in...

Henry Wallace (1836-1916) was an American agricultural publicist and editor of the newspaper Wallaces' Farmer from 1895 to 1916. Henry Wallace was born on a farm outside West Newton, Pa., on March 19, 1836. His parents were hardworking, re...

Ernest Walsh, expatriate American poet and coeditor of the small, but influential, experimental magazine This Quarter, was born in Detroit, Michigan. As a child he lived in Cuba, where his father, James Walsh, was a tea and coffee wholesal...

An American filmmaker and entrepreneur, Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966) created a new kind of popular culture in feature-length animated cartoons and live-action "family" films. Walter Elias Disney was born in Chicago, Illinois, on Decembe...

Walter Baade was born on March 24, 1893, in Schröttinghausen, Westphalia, Germany. While still in high school, he began to cultivate his interest and talents in astronomy. He obtained a Ph.D. at Göttingen in 1919 and spent eleven...

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), a German philosopher and critic, published widely on such topics as technology, language, literature, the arts, and society. He left a large body of mostly unfinished work that has been slowly published in his ...

Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr., (born 1916) was an American journalist and radio and television news broadcaster who became preeminent among the outstanding group of correspondents and commentators developed by CBS News after World War II. Wa...

American scientist Walter Gilbert (born 1932), who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980, became world famous for his groundbreaking research in the field of molecular biology. Admired by both fellow scientists and laymen, his effor...

The German-American architect, educator, and designer Walter Gropius (1883-1969) was director of the famed Bauhaus in Germany from 1919 to 1928 and served as the chair of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design fro...

The American journalist and diplomat Walter Hines Page (1855-1918) edited several distinguished periodicals and served as ambassador to Great Britain during World War I. Born in Cary, N.C., on Aug. 15, 1855, Walter Hines Page was educated ...

The American author Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) was his era's most respected journalist and a significant contributor to its political thought. The only child of well-to-do, second-generation German-Jewish parents, Walter Lippmann studied ...

Walter Pater is important to English literary history because he combines a commitment to the romantic theory that art is essentially an expression of personality with a sympathetic response to the scientific and historical studies of the ...

The American clergyman Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918) broke the complacency and conservatism of late-19th-century American Protestantism, propounding a Social Gospel capable of responding to the challenges of an industrial, urban era. Wa...

American labor leader Walter Philip Reuther (1907-1970) pioneered in unionizing the mass-production industries. In a movement traditionally preoccupied with bread-and-butter goals, he dedicated his career to broadening labor's political an...

The English poet, essayist, and critic Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) is best known for his "Imaginary Conversations," a series of dialogues between historical personages. Walter Savage Landor was born on Jan. 30, 1775, the eldest son of...

Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) was one of England's greatest impressionist painters. His cityscapes and music hall scenes were frequently based, compositionally, on Degas's paintings. Walter Sickert was born in Munich to a Danish fathe...