(1964).
Wilder, Laura Ingalls orig. Laura Ingalls (b. Feb. 7, 1867, Lake Pepin, Wis., U.S.—d. Feb. 10, 1957, Mansfield, Mo.) U.S. children’s author. She led the pioneer life with her family, living in Kansas, Min¬ nesota, Iowa, and South Dakota, where she married. With her husband she finally settled in Missouri, where she edited the Missouri Ruralist for 12 years before being encouraged by her daughter to write down her childhood memories, and the internationally popular Little House books (1932-43) were the result. They were the basis for a popular television series (1974-84).
Wilder, Thornton (Niven) (b. April 17, 1897, Madison, Wis., U.S.—d. Dec. 7, 1975, Hamden, Conn.) U.S. playwright and novelist. After attending Yale University, Wilder studied archaeology in Rome. He earned wide acclaim for his second novel. The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927, Pulitzer Prize). His play Our Town (1938, Pulitzer Prize), which became one of the most enduringly popular of all American plays, was followed by the successful The Skin of Our Teeth (1942, Pulitzer Prize). In them he rejected naturalism, often discarding props and scenery, using deliberate anachronisms, and having the characters address the audience directly. His farcical play The Matchmaker (1954) was adapted into the musical Hello, Dolly! (1964). Wilder’s later novels include The Eighth Day (1967) and Theophilus North (1973).
Wilderness, Battle of the (May 5-7, 1864) Engagement in the American Civil War. When Ulysses S. Grant planned a Union campaign to capture Richmond, Va., and advanced with 115,000 troops, he was met by a Confederate army of 62,000 under Robert E. Lee in dense thickets called the Wilderness. After two days of intense and inconclusive fight¬ ing, Union casualties outnumbered those of the Confederacy (burning brush killed many of the wounded), and Grant saw the futility of further hostilities in the area. He moved on to do battle at Spotsylvania Court¬ house, forcing Lee back toward Richmond.
wildflower Any flowering plant that grows without intentional human aid. Wildflowers are the source of all cultivated garden varieties of flow¬ ers. A wildflower growing where it is unwanted is considered a weed. Thousands of the approximately 250,000 species of flowering plants are wildflowers. Wildflowers can be divided into three categories by location: those found in the tropics and subtropics, those in temperate regions, and those that grow on the summits of mountain chains and in the Arctic and Antarctic.
wildlife conservation Regulation of wild animals and plants in such a way as to provide for their continuance. Efforts are aimed at prevent¬ ing the depletion of present populations and ensuring the continued exist¬ ence of the habitats targeted species need to survive. Techniques involve establishment of sanctuaries and controls on hunting, use of land, impor¬ tation of exotic species, pollution, and use of pesticides. See also biodi¬ versity, conservation, endangered species.
Wilfrid, Saint or Wilfrid of York (b. 634, Northumbria, Eng.—d. April 24,709/710, monastery of Oundle, Mercia) English monk and bishop who established close relations between the Anglo-Saxon church and the papacy. As abbot of the monastery at Ripon, he introduced the Benedictine Rule to the kingdom. At the Synod of Whitby, he successfully advocated the adoption of Roman over Celtic traditions. As bishop of York, he built a monastery at Hexham and traveled twice to Rome to defend the see of York in jurisdictional controversies with the see of Canterbury (679, 704). A quarrel over the division of his diocese obliged Wilfrid to take refuge in Sussex, where he Christianized the people and founded a monastery at Sel- sey; he later served as bishop of Lichfield in Mercia. Following his second dispute with Canterbury, Wilfrid became bishop of Hexham and spent his last years there and at his monastery in Ripon.
Wilhelmina (Helena Pauline Maria) (b. Aug. 31, 1880, The Hague, Neth.—d. Nov. 28, 1962, Het Loo, near Apeldoorn) Queen of The Netherlands (1890-1948). Daughter of King William III, she became queen on his death, under her mother’s regency until 1898, and soon gained wide popular approval. She helped maintain her country’s neutrality in World War I. After Germany invaded The Netherlands in 1940, she left with her
Oscar Wilde, 1882.
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Wilkes ► William I I 2059
family for London. Throughout World War II she made radio broadcasts to maintain the morale of the Dutch people, becoming a symbol of Dutch resistance to the German occupation. In 1948 she abdicated in favour of her daughter, Juliana.
Wilkes, John (b. Oct. 17, 1725, London, Eng.—d. Dec. 26, 1797, Lon¬ don) English politician. The son of a successful malt distiller, he was edu¬ cated at an academy at Hertford and afterward privately tutored. His marriage to Mary Meade (1747), heiress of the manor of Aylesbury, brought him a comfortable fortune and an assured status among the gentry of Buckinghamshire. A profligate by nature, he was a member of the so-called Hell-Fire Club, which indulged in debauchery and the perfor¬ mance of Black Masses, and he bribed voters to win election to the House of Commons (1757). For an attack on the government in his journal the North Briton (1763), he was prosecuted for libel and expelled from Par¬ liament. Reelected, he continued to print his attacks on the government and was again tried for libel and expelled (1764). Regarded as a victim of per¬ secution and a champion of liberty, he gained widespread popular support. He was again elected to Parliament and again expelled (1769). He become lord mayor of London in 1774. Back in the House of Commons (1774-90), he supported parliamentary reform and freedom of the press.
Wilkes, Maurice V(incent) (b. June 26, 1913, Dudley, Staffordshire, Eng.) British computer-science pioneer. He helped build the EDSAC com¬ puter (1949), invented microprogramming (1950), cowrote the first book on computer programming (1951), wrote the first paper on cache memo¬ ries (1964), and pioneered client-server architecture computing (1980). He won the Turing Award in 1967 and the Kyoto Prize in 1992. In 1995 he published Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer.
Wilkins, Maurice (Hugh Frederick) (b. Dec. 15, 1916, Pongaroa, N.Z.—d. Oct. 6, 2004, London, Eng.) New Zealand-born British bio¬ physicist. Educated in Birmingham and Cambridge, he participated in the Manhattan Project, working on the separation of uranium isotopes for use in the atomic bomb. On his return to Britain, he began a series of inves¬ tigations that led ultimately to his studies of DNA. His X-ray diffraction studies of DNA proved crucial to the determination of DNA’s molecular structure by James D. Watson and Francis Crick, for which the three were awarded a 1962 Nobel Prize. He later applied X-ray diffraction techniques to the study of RNA. See also Rosalind Franklin.
Wilkins, Roy (b. Aug. 30, 1901, St. Louis, Mo., U.S.—d. Sept. 8, 1981, New York, N.Y.) U.S. civil-rights leader. He was a reporter for the Afri¬ can American-owned Kansas City Call and later became its managing editor. He joined the staff of the NAACP (1931) and became editor (1934- 49) of its official publication, The Crisis. In 1955 he began a 22-year ten¬ ure as executive director of the NAACP, which he set on a course of seeking equal rights through legal redress. He helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, and he served as chairman of the U.S. delegation to the International Conference on Human Rights in 1968.
Wilkinson, James (b. 1757, Calvert county, Md.—d. Dec. 28, 1825, Mexico City, Mex.) American army officer and double agent. He served in the American Revolution under Hora¬ tio Gates and was involved in the Thomas Conway cabal. He settled in Kentucky in 1784 and schemed to ally the Kentucky region with Spain, though he was in fact working against Spain. He served as governor of part of the Louisiana territory (1805-06). He allegedly planned to conquer the Mexican provinces of Spain and conspired with Aaron Burr to establish an independent govern¬ ment; when he betrayed Burr’s plan, he was investigated but cleared. In the War of 1812 he commanded U.S. forces on the Canadian border, but his campaign against Montreal failed.