White, John (fl. 1585-93) British artist, explorer, and North American colonist. He sailed on an expedition to Greenland in 1577 and returned to England with sketches of the land and its people. His 1585 trip to colo¬ nize Roanoke was sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh. White’s paintings and sketches illustrated a report of the region after the colony was abandoned (1586). He was appointed governor of a second colony and arrived at Roanoke with 100 colonists (1587). He returned to England for supplies that year but was unable to send a relief expedition to Roanoke until 1590; the expedition found no trace of the colonists, including White’s grand¬ daughter, Virginia Dare.
White, Minor (b. July 9, 1908, Minneapolis, Minn., U.S—d. June 24, 1976, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. photographer and editor. He began to pho¬ tograph seriously in 1938 when he went to work for the Works Progress Administration. In 1946 he studied with Edward Weston and Alfred Stieg- litz before moving to San Francisco, where he worked closely with Ansel Adams. He succeeded Adams as head of the photography department at the California School of Fine Arts and later taught at MIT. He founded and edited (1952-76) the photography magazine Aperture and also edited Image (1953-57). His efforts to extend photography’s range of expres¬ sion made him one of the century’s most influential photographers.
White, Patrick (Victor Martindale) (b. May 28, 1912, London, Eng.—d. Sept. 30, 1990, Sydney, N.S.W., Austrl.) Australian writer. As a youth White moved between Australia and England, where he attended Cambridge University. After serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II, he returned to Australia, which he saw as a country in a volatile process of growth and self-definition. His somewhat misanthropic novels often explore the possibilities of savagery in that context; they include The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957), Riders in the Chariot (1961), and The Twyborn Affair (1979). His other works include plays and short sto¬ ries, the latter collected in The Burnt Ones (1964) and The Cockatoos (1974). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973.
White, Stanford (b. Nov. 9, 1853, New York, N.Y., U.S.—d. June 25, 1906, New York City) U.S. architect. He trained with Henry Hobson Rich¬ ardson. In 1880 he formed an architectural firm with Charles F. McKim and William R. Mead that soon became the most famous in the country, known especially for its Shingle-style country and seaside mansions. The firm later led the U.S. trend toward Neoclassical architecture. White’s design for the Casino (1881) at Newport, R.I., exhibited his characteristic use of gracefully proportioned structures and Italian Renaissance ornamentation. His New York commissions included Madison Square Garden (1891) and the Washington Arch (1891). A versatile artist, he also designed jewelry, furniture, and interiors. An extrovert noted for his lavish entertainments, he was shot to death at Madison Square Garden by Harry Thaw, the hus¬ band of the showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, with whom White had had a love affair.
White, T(erence) H(anbury) (b. May 29, 1906, Bombay, India—d. Jan. 17, 1964, Piraeus, Greece) English novelist, social historian, and satirist. Educated at Cambridge University, White was working as a teacher when he attained his first critical success with the autobiographi¬ cal England Have My Bones (1936). He later devoted himself to writing, studying subjects such as Arthurian legend while living a largely reclusive life. He is best known for his adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur in the tetralogy The Once and Future King (1958), comprising The Sword in the Stone (1938), The Queen of Air and Darkness (origi¬ nally The Witch in the Wood, 1939), The Ill-Made Knight (1940), and The Candle in the Wind (1958).
White, Theodore H(arold) (b. May 6, 1915, Boston, Mass., U.S.—d. May 15, 1986, New York, N.Y.) U.S. journalist, historian, and novelist. White became one of Time magazine’s first foreign correspon¬
dents, serving in East Asia (1939—45) and later as a European correspon¬ dent. He is best known for his accounts of two presidential elections, The Making of the President, 1960 (1961, Pulitzer Prize) and The Making of the President, 1964 (1965), and for associating the short-lived presidency of John F. Kennedy with the legend of Camelot. His intimate style of jour¬ nalism, centring on the personalities of his subjects, strongly influenced the course of political journalism and campaign coverage.
White, William Allen (b. Feb. 10, 1868, Emporia, Kan., U.S.—d. Jan. 29, 1944, Emporia) U.S. journalist. White purchased the Emporia Daily and Weekly Gazette in 1895. His editorial writing was a mixture of tol¬ erance, optimism, liberal Republicanism, and provincialism. His widely circulated 1896 editorial “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” was credited with helping elect William McKinley president. He also wrote fiction, biog¬ raphies, and an autobiography. His son and successor, William Lindsay White (1900-73), wrote one of the best-selling books on World War II, They Were Expendable (1942).
white blood cell See leukocyte
white butterfly Any of several Pieridae that are found worldwide.
Adults have a wingspan of 1.5-2.5 in. (38-63 mm); the wings are white, with black marginal markings. The pattern and colour of many species vary with sex and season. Many of the green, slender larvae, most of which are covered with a short down, or pile, are pests of garden crops. The pupae are attached to a twig by a posterior spine and a girdle of silk. See also cabbage white.
white cedar In the lumber trade, the American arborvitae, some spe¬ cies of false cypress (genus Chamae- cyparis) and McNab cypress, incense cedar ( Calocedrus decurrens), and California juniper, all in the cypress family. Nonconiferous trees that are called white cedar include the chinaberry ( Melia azedarach, mahogany family) and some members of the plant families Bignoniaceae (trumpet creepers), Celastraceae (staff trees), Myristicaceae (nutmegs), Burseraceae, and Dipterocarpaceae. Botani- cally, white cedar is Chamaecyparis thyoides, a picturesque tree with purple cones, native to North America and East Asia. The wood is used for carpentry, pencils, storage chests, interiors, and fence posts.
white dwarf star Any of a class of small, faint stars representing the end point of the evolution of stars without enough mass to become neu¬ tron stars or black holes. Named for the white colour of the first ones dis¬ covered, they actually occur in a variety of colours depending on their temperature. They are extremely dense, typically containing the mass of the Sun within the volume of the Earth. White dwarfs have exhausted all their nuclear fuel and cannot produce heat by nuclear fusion to counter¬ act their own gravity, which compresses the electrons and nuclei of their atoms until they prevent further gravitational contraction. When a white dwarf’s reservoir of thermal energy is exhausted (after several billion years), it stops radiating and becomes a cold, inert stellar remnant, some¬ times called a black dwarf. White dwarf stars are predicted to have an upper mass limit, known as the Chandrasekhar limit (see Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar), of about 1.4 times the Sun’s mass. Dying stars that are more massive undergo a supernova explosion. As members of binary stars, white dwarf stars play an essential role in the outbursts of novas.
white-footed mouse See deer mouse
White Horse, Vale of the Valley, Oxfordshire, England. It is named for the White Horse, a gigantic (374 ft [114 m] long) prehistoric figure of a horse formed by cutting away the turf on the side of a chalk hill. A number of other prehistoric remains are in the vicinity, including the megalith known as Wayland’s Smithy. Wantage, an ancient market town in the valley, is said to be the birthplace of Alfred the Great.
White House Official residence of the U.S. president, in Washington, D.C. It has been the home of every president since John Adams. In 1791 James Hoban (1762-1831) won the commission to build the presidential residence with his plan for a Georgian mansion in the style of Andrea Palladio. The structure, to be built of gray sandstone, was to have more