Kamenev ► Kandy I 1013
islands. A popular and benevolent ruler, he improved harbours to accom¬ modate Hawaii’s growing whaling industry and provided free medical care for Hawaiians. He resolutely opposed the annexation of Hawaii by the U.S.
Kamenev Vka-myo-.nyefV Lev (Borisovich) orig. Lev Borisov¬ ich Rosenfeld (b. July 18, 1883, Moscow, Russia—d. Aug. 24, 1936, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Russian political leader. A member of the Bol¬ sheviks from 1903, he worked with Vladimir Ilich Lenin in Europe (1909-14), then returned to Russia, where he was arrested and sent to Siberia. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he served as head of the Moscow soviet (1919— 25). When Lenin became seriously ill in 1922, Kamenev joined Joseph Sta¬ lin and Grigory Y. Zinovyev to form the ruling triumvirate, attacking Leon Trotsky. In 1925 Stalin shifted his attack to Kamenev and Zinovyev, removng Kamenev as Moscow party head. In 1926 Kamenev was expelled from the party after conspiring with Zinovyev and Trotsky against Stalin. In 1936 he was tried in the first of the purge trials and confessed to fabricated charges, hoping to save his family. He was executed, and his wife, Trotsky’s sister, perished in the Gulag.
Kamerlingh Onnes N.ka-mor-liq-'o-nosX, Heike (b. Sept. 21, 1853, Groningen, Neth.—d. Feb. 21, 1926, Leiden) Dutch physicist. He taught at the University of Leiden (1882-1923), and in 1884 he founded the Cryogenic Laboratory (now known by his name) that established Leiden as the world’s principal research centre for low-temperature physics. He was the first to produce liquid helium (1908), and he discovered super¬ conductivity. He also investigated the equations describing the states of matter and the general thermodynamic properties of fluids over a wide range of temperatures and pressures. He was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize for Physics.
kamikaze \,ka-mi-'ka-ze\ Any of the Japanese pilots in World War II who made deliberate suicidal crashes into enemy targets, usually ships. The word means “divine wind,” a reference to a typhoon that dispersed a Mongol invasion fleet threatening Japan from the west in 1281. The prac¬ tice was most prevalent in the final year of the war. Most kamikaze planes were ordinary fighter aircraft or light bombers, usually loaded with bombs or extra gasoline tanks before their suicidal dive. Such attacks sank 34 ships and damaged hundreds of others; at Okinawa they inflicted the greatest losses ever suffered by the U.S. Navy in a single battle, killing almost 5,000 men. See also Zero.
Kammu \'ka-mu\ (b. 737, Nara, Japan—d. April 9, 806, Heian-kyo [Kyoto]) Emperor of Japan (781-806). To curb the power of the Buddhist temples located in Nara, he moved the capital from Heijo-kyo (Nara) to Nagaoka in 784 and then to the city of Heian-kyo in 794. The establish¬ ment of the capital in Heian-kyo marked the start of the Heian period.
Kamo Chomei \'ka-mo-'ch6-ma\ (b. 1155, Japan—d. July 24, 1216, Kyoto) Japanese poet and critic. He is best known for An Account of My Hut (1212), a poetic diary describing his life in seclusion written after he left a court office to take Buddhist orders and become a hermit. His poetry is representative of the best of an age that produced many poets of the first rank. His Nameless Notes (1208/09) is an extremely valuable collec¬ tion of critical comments, anecdotes, and poetic lore.
Kampala \kam-'pa-la\ City (pop., 1998: 1,154,000), capital of Uganda. The country’s largest city, it is in southern Uganda, north of Lake Victo¬ ria. It was selected in 1890 by Capt. Frederick Lugard as the headquar¬ ters of the British East Africa Company. Lugard’s fort on Old Kampala Hill remained the Ugandan colonial administrative headquarters until 1905. In 1962 Kampala became the capital of independent Uganda. It is the site of the headquarters of most of Uganda’s large firms and of Mak- erere University (1922) and the Uganda Museum.
Kampuchea See Cambodia
Kampuchean See Khmer Kan River See Gan River Kanarese language See Kannada language Kanawa, Kiri Te See Kiri Te Kanawa
Kanawha \k9-'n6-w3\ River River, West Virginia, U.S. Formed by the confluence of the New and Gauley rivers, it flows northwest for 97 mi (156 km), entering the Ohio River at Point Pleasant. It has dams and locks and is navigable to Kanawha Falls, located 30 mi (48 km) above Charleston, W.Va. The Kanawha River valley has extensive deposits of salt brines and natural gas and oil wells.
Kanchenjunga V.kon-chan-'jsq-goX Peak in the Himalayas. The world’s third highest mountain, it reaches 28,169 ft (8,586 m). It is located on the border between Nepal and Sikkim state, India, northwest of Darjiling. Rinzin Namgyal, a 19th-century explorer, made the first map of the peak. In 1955 a British expedition led by Charles Evans made the first success¬ ful climb.
Kandel, Eric (b. Nov. 7, 1929, Vienna, Austria) Austrian-born U.S. neurobiologist. He received his M.D. from New York University. Kan- del’s research revealed the role of synaptic transmission in learning and memory. He showed that weak stimuli give rise to certain chemical changes in synapses, forming the basis for short-term memory, and that stronger stimuli cause different synaptic changes, which result in a form of long-term memory. Along with Paul Greengard and Arvid Carlsson, Kandel was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2000. The findings of the three men resulted in the development of new drugs for parkinsonism and other dis¬ orders.
Kander, John (b. March 18, 1927, Kansas City, Mo., U.S.) U.S. song¬ writer. He studied music at Oberlin College and Columbia University and later wrote arrangements for plays. With lyricist Fred Ebb, a native New Yorker who also studied at Columbia and wrote lyrics for revues, he wrote the scores for some of Broadway’s most successful musicals, including Cabaret (1966; film, 1972), Zorba (1968), Chicago (1975; film, 2002), and Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992), and for films such as Funny Lady (1975) and New York, New York (1977).
Kandinsky \kan-'din-ske\, Vasily (Vasilievich) (b. Dec. 4, 1866, Moscow, Russia—d. Dec. 13, 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) Russian painter, a pioneer of pure abstraction in modern painting. Trained in the law and offered a law professorship, he chose painting instead and set out for Germany. After art studies in Munich, by 1909 he began his lifelong pursuit: a kind of painting in which colours, lines, and shapes, freed from the distracting business of depicting recognizable objects, might evolve into a visual “language” capable of expressing general ideas and evoking deep emotions. In his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912) he set forth these ideas, comparing the expressiveness of forms and colour to qualities in music. In 1911 he and Franz Marc founded an informally organized group of like-minded artists called Der Blaue Reiter (“The Blue Rider”). From 1921 to 1933 he taught at the influential Bauhaus in Weimar; during this period Kandinsky continued to evolve in the general direction of geometric abstraction, but with a dynamism and a taste for detail. When the Nazis closed the Bauhaus, he immigrated to Paris. During this final period his painting became a synthesis of the organic manner of the Munich period and the geometric manner of the Bauhaus period. The visual language that he had been aiming at since at least 1910 turned into collections of signs that look like almost-decipherable messages written in pictographs and hieroglyphs. His influence on 20th-century art and abstract art in general was profound.
Kandler \'ken-dler\, Johann Joachim (b. 1706, Fischbach,
Saxony—d. May 18, 1775, Meissen)
German Baroque sculptor. In 1731 he was engaged to reorganize the modeling department of the porce¬ lain factory at Meissen; he held the position of chief modeler there from 1733 until his death. It was largely through Kandler’s genius that Meis¬ sen porcelain gained world renown.
Among his best-known works are his commedia dell’arte figurines, largely done between 1736 and 1744.
Kandy Important independent monarchy in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) at the end of the 15 th century and the last Sinhalese kingdom to be subju¬ gated by a colonial power. Kandy survived the predations of the Portu¬ guese by allying with the Dutch and survived the Dutch by seeking Brit¬ ish aid; when the British took over Ceylon in 1796, Kandy was left on its own. The first British attack on