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Taft, William Howard

(Encyclopedia)Taft, William Howard, 1857–1930, 27th President of the United States (1909–13) and 10th chief justice of the United States (1921–30), b. Cincinnati. Taft retired from public life and taught ...

Beaux, Cecilia

(Encyclopedia)Beaux, Cecilia bō [key], 1855–1942, American figure and portrait painter, b. Philadelphia. She studied in Philadelphia under William Sartain (see under Sartain, John) and Thomas Eakins, in Paris in...

Blake, William

(Encyclopedia)Blake, William, 1757–1827, English poet and artist, b. London. Although he exerted a great influence on English romanticism, Blake defies characterization by school, movement, or even period. At the...

Lansing, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Lansing, Robert, 1864–1928, U.S. Secretary of State (1915–20), b. Watertown, N.Y. An authority in the field of international law, he founded the American Journal of International Law in 1907 and r...

Wordsworth, William

(Encyclopedia)Wordsworth, William, 1770–1850, English poet, b. Cockermouth, Cumberland. One of the great English poets, he was a leader of the romantic movement in England. Wordsworth's personality and poetry ...

Oliphant, Margaret Oliphant (Wilson)

(Encyclopedia)Oliphant, Margaret Oliphant (Wilson), 1828–97, Scottish author. She was widowed at the age of 31 and subsequently supported her own three children and her brother and his family. Astonishingly proli...

Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson

(Encyclopedia)Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson, 1828–1914, English chemist and physicist. He made an incandescent lamp using a carbon filament (1860), 20 years before Edison's lamp. Noted for important contributions to ph...

Wilson, Charles Thomson Rees

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Charles Thomson Rees, 1869–1959, Scottish physicist, educated at Manchester and Cambridge universities. He was Jacksonian professor of natural philosophy at Cambridge from 1925 to 1934. Note...

Wilson, James, American jurist

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, James, 1742–98, American jurist, signer of the Declaration of Independence, b. near St. Andrews, Scotland. He studied at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh and, after emigrating to Pe...

Wilson, Robert Butler, Jr.

(Encyclopedia)Wilson, Robert Butler, Jr., 1973–, American economist, b. Geneva, Nebr., D.B.A. Harvard, 1963. A faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business since 1964 (emeritus from 2004), he is a s...