Kahn, Albert (b. March 21, 1869, Rhaunen, Westphalia—d. Dec. 8, 1942, Detroit, Mich., U.S.) German-bom U.S. industrial architect. In 1904 he received a commission for the Packard Motor Car Co. auto factory; his design, with its reinforced concrete frame, represented an innovative departure from traditional masonry factory construction. Kahn was the principal architect for most of the large American automobile companies for 30 years. His firm designed more than a thousand projects for Ford, among them the fabrication and assembly plant in River Rouge, Mich., which was one of the largest industrial complexes in the world. By 1937 his firm was producing 19% of all architect-designed industrial buildings in the U.S., and he received commissions for factories, foundries, and ware¬ houses from all continents. Kahn’s firm designed 521 factories in the U.S.S.R. and trained more than a thousand Soviet engineers during the 1930s.
Kahn, Herman (b. Feb. 15,1922, Bayonne, N.J., U.S.—d. July 7,1983, Chappaqua, N.Y.) U.S. physicist and strategist. He studied at the California Institute of Technology and joined the RAND Corp., where he studied the application to military strategy of new analytic techniques such as game theory, operations research, and systems analysis. He won public notice with On Thermonuclear War (1960), in which he contended that thermo¬ nuclear war differs only in degree from conventional war and ought to be analyzed and planned in the same way. In 1961 he established the Hudson Institute for research into matters of national security and public policy.
Kahn, Louis l(sadore) (b. Feb. 20, 1901, Osel, Estonia, Russian Empire—d. March 17, 1974, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Estonian-born U.S. architect. He came to the U.S. as a child and graduated from the Univer¬ sity of Pennsylvania. One of the century’s most original architects, Kahn turned from the International Style to a timeless, elegant Brutalism evoca¬ tive of ancient ruins. His Richards Medical Research Building (1960-65) at the University of Pennsylvania isolated “servant” spaces (stairwells, elevators, vents, and pipes) in four towers distinct from “served” spaces (laboratories and offices). His fortresslike National Assembly Building in Dhaka, Bangl. (1962-74), utilized geometric shapes to admit light to its
inner domed mosque. Like R. Buckminster Fuller, Kahn was concerned about wasteful use of natural resources; his urban-planning schemes pro¬ posed geodesic skyscrapers and huge car “silos.” He taught at Yale Uni¬ versity (1947-57) and the University of Pennsylvania (1957-74), where appreciation for his intellect gained him a cult status.
Kahneman, Daniel (b. March 5, 1934, Tel Aviv, Israel) Israeli-born psychologist. He attended Hebrew University (B.A., 1954) in Jerusalem and the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D., 1961). He later taught at such institutions as Princeton University and was on the editorial board of several academic journals. In the late 1960s he began conducting research to increase understanding of how people make economic decisions. His work with Amos Tversky on decision making under uncertainty resulted in the formulation of a new branch of economics, prospect theory. Using sur¬ veys and experiments, Kahneman showed that people were incapable of analyzing complex decision situations when the future consequences were uncertain. Instead, they relied on heuristic, or rule-of-thumb, shortcuts. In 2002 he shared the Nobel Prize for Economics with Vernon L. Smith.
Kaibara Ekiken \'kl-ba-ra-e-'ke- 1 ken\ (b. Dec. 17, 1630, Fukuoka, Japan—d. Oct. 5, 1714, Japan) Japanese philosopher, travel writer, and pioneer botanist. Trained as a physician, he left the medical profession in 1657 to study the Neo-Confucian writings of Zhu Xi. He wrote about 100 philosophical works, which stressed the hierarchical nature of society and translated Confucian doctrine into terms understood by Japanese of all social classes. His writings include The Great Learning for Women , a tract on obedience long considered the most important ethical text for Japa¬ nese women. He is regarded as the father of botany in Japan.
Kaieteur VkI-9-,tur\ Falls Cataract on the Potaro River, west-central Guyana. After a sheer drop of 741 ft (226 m), the falls pass into a gorge 5 mi (8 km) long, which descends another 81 ft (25 m). The falls are 300 to 350 ft (90 to 105 m) wide at the top and are the central feature of Kai¬ eteur National Park (1930).
Kaifeng Vkl-'foqN or K'ai-feng City (pop., 2003 est.: 594,887), north¬ ern Henan province, China. In the 4th century bc it became the capital of the state of Wei, and the first of its canals was built. It was destroyed by the Qin dynasty in the late 3rd century bc, and until the 5th century ad it was only a market town. It became an important commercial centre in the 7th century, enriched by traffic along the Grand Canal, and it was the capital of the Five Dynasties and the Song dynasty. Kaifeng was the site of China’s only well-documented Jewish community (12th-16th centuries).
Kaikei Vkl-,ka\ (fl. 1183-1236, Japan) Japanese sculptor who helped establish the traditional pattern of Buddhist sculpture. His technique, known as the Anami style, is noted for its gentleness and grace. Together with his teacher, Kokei, and his colleague Unkei, he made statues for the temples of Kofuku and Todai in Nara, Japan’s ancient capital. He later became a monk and assumed the name Anami Butsu.
Kairouan \ker-'wan\ or Al-Qayrawan City (pop., 1994: 102,600), northeastern Tunisia. A religious centre of Islam, it was founded in 670 by the Arab general Sid! ‘Uqbah and became the first Arab city in the Ma¬ ghrib. It was chosen as the Maghrib capital by the Aghlabid dynasty c. 800. It served as an administrative, commercial, religious, and intellectual cen¬ tre under the Fatimid and Zlrid dynasties. The rise of Tunis, the new capi¬ tal, led to Kairouan’s decline and its devastation by Bedouin in the 11th century. It is the site of the 9th-century Great Mosque of the Qayrawan, one of the city’s 150 mosques.
Kaiser Vkl-zoiA, Henry J(ohn) (b. May 9, 1882, Sprout Brook, N.Y., U.S.—d. Aug. 24, 1967, Honolulu, Hawaii) U.S. industrialist and founder of more than 100 companies, including Kaiser Aluminum, Kaiser Steel, and Kaiser Cement and Gypsum. He undertook his first public-works projects beginning in 1914, eventually building dams in California, levees on the Mississippi River, and highways in Cuba. Between 1931 and 1945 he organized combinations of construction companies to build the Hoover, Bonneville, and Grand Coulee dams and other large public projects. Dur¬ ing World War II he ran seven shipyards, making steel in an integrated steel mill and using assembly-line production to build ships in less than five days. He established the first health maintenance organization, the Kaiser plan, for his shipyard employees; it served more than a million people and became a model for later federal programs. In the postwar era he dealt profitably in aluminum, steel, and automobiles.
Kakinomoto Hitomaro Vka-ke-no-.mo-to- 'he-t6-,ma-r6\ known as Hitomaro (d. 708, Japan) Japanese poet. He entered the service of the
"Diego and I," oil on masonite, self- portrait (with forehead portrait of Diego Rivera) by Frida Kahlo, 1949; in the gallery of Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art, New York City
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Kalacuri dynasty ► Kali I 1011
imperial court and later became a provincial official. Japan’s first great literary figure, he lived when Japan was moving from a preliterate to a literate, civilized society. His writings, on a wide range of subjects, bal¬ ance the homely qualities of primitive song with sophisticated interests and literary techniques. All 77 poems accepted as indisputably his, and many others attributed to him, appear in the Man ’yoshu, the first and larg¬ est of Japan’s anthologies of native poetry.