Wilson, Alexander (b. July 6, 1766, Paisley, Renfrew, Scot.—d. Aug. 23, 1813, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.) Scottish-born U.S. ornithologist. In Scotland he wrote poetry while working as a weaver and peddler; in 1792 his satiric works led to a fine and imprisonment. Impoverished, in 1794 he immigrated to the U.S., where he became a teacher. Influenced by Wil¬ liam Bartram, he decided c. 1804 to write on North American birds, and he began studying art and ornithology in his leisure time. His pioneering
work American Ornithology (9 vol., 1808-14) established him as a founder of the field. After publica¬ tion of its first volume, he spent much of his time selling subscrip¬ tions for the expensive work and col¬ lecting specimens for the remaining volumes.
Wilson, August (b. April 27, 1945, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.—-d. Oct. 2, 2005, Seattle, Wash.) U.S. play¬ wright. He was largely self- educated. A participant in the black aesthetic movement, he cofounded and directed Pittsburgh’s Black Horizons Theatre (1968), published poetry in African American journals, and pro¬ duced several plays, including Jitney (1982), before his Ma Rainey’s
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Wilson, C. ► Wilson, R. I 2063
Black Bottom opened on Broadway in 1984. Inspired by the colloquial language, music, folklore, and storytelling tradition of African Americans, he continued his cycle of plays, each set in a different decade of the 20th century, with Fences (1986, Pulitzer Prize), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1988), The Piano Lesson (1990, Pulitzer Prize), Two Trains Running (1992), Seven Guitars (1996), Gem of the Ocean (first produced 2003), King Hedley II (2005), and Radio Golf (first produced 2005).
Wilson, C(harles) T(homson) R(ees) (b. Feb. 14, 1869, Glencorse, Midlothian, Scot.—d. Nov. 15, 1959, Carlops, Peeblesshire) Scottish physicist. His invention of the Wilson cloud chamber, a device that became widely used in the study of radioactivity, X rays, cosmic rays, and other particle phenomena, also led to the later development of the bubble cham¬ ber. He shared the 1927 Nobel Prize for Physics with Arthur Compton.
Wilson, Colin (Henry) (b. June 26, 1931, Leicester, Leicestershire, Eng.) British writer. Born into a working-class family, he initially thought of a career in science, then gravitated toward writing. At age 24 he pub¬ lished The Outsider (1957), a study of 20th-century alienation that had phenomenal success. His next book was dismissed as unoriginal or super¬ ficial, but Ritual in the Dark (1960) and Adrift in Soho (1961) helped repair his reputation. Many of his more than 70 books deal with the psy¬ chology of crime, the occult, human sexuality, and his own existential philosophy. Alien Dawn (1998) discusses the UFO phenomenon.
Wilson, Edmund (b. May 8, 1895, Red Bank, N.J., U.S.—d. June 12, 1972, Talcottville, N.Y.) U.S. critic and essayist. He attended Princeton University and initially worked as a reporter and magazine editor. Much of his writing, in which he probed diverse subjects with scholarship and common sense in clear and precise prose, was published in The New Republic and The New Yorker.
Among his influential critical works are Axel’s Castle (1931), a survey of the Symbolist poets; To the Finland Station (1940), a study of the think¬ ers who set the stage for the Russian Revolution; and Patriotic Gore (1962), analyzing American Civil War literature. His other writings include plays, poetry, the short-story collection Memoirs of Hecate County (1946), and five volumes of post¬ humously published journals. He was widely regarded as the leading critic of his time.
Wilson, Edmund B(eecher) (b. Oct. 19, 1856, Geneva, Ill., U.S.—d. March 3, 1939, New York, N.Y.) U.S. cell biologist. He joined the Colum¬ bia University faculty in 1891, where he became established as a pioneer in work on cell lineage (tracing the formation of different kinds of tissues from individual cells). His interests later extended to internal cellular organization and the problem of sex determination, leading to a series of papers (1905) on the role of chromosomes. Recognizing the importance of Gregor Mendel’s findings, he realized that the role of chromosomes went far beyond the determination of sex and envisioned their function as important components in heredity as a whole, ideas that were a pow¬ erful force in shaping future genetic research.
Wilson, Edward O(sborne) (b. June 10, 1929, Birmingham, Ala., U.S.) U.S. biologist. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he taught from 1956. Recognized as the world’s leading authority on ants, he discovered their use of pheromone for communication. His The Insect Societies (1971) was the definitive treatment of the subject. In 1975 he published Sociobiology, a highly controversial and influential study of the genetic basis of social behaviour in which he claimed that even a characteristic such as unselfish generosity may be genetically based and may have evolved through natural selection, that preservation of the gene rather than the individual is the focus of evolutionary strategy, and that the essentially biological principles on which animal societies are based apply also to human social behaviour. In On Human Nature (1978, Pulitzer Prize) he explored sociobiology’s implications in regard to human aggression, sexuality, and ethics. With Bert Holldobler he wrote the major study The Ants (1990, Pulitzer Prize). In The Diversity of Life (1992) he examined how the world’s species became diverse and the massive extinc¬
tions caused by 20th-century human activities. In Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998) he proposed that all of existence can be organized and understood in accordance with a few fundamental natural laws.
Wilson, (James) Harold, Baron Wilson (of Rievaulx) (b.
March 11, 1916, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, Eng.—d. May 24, 1995, Lon¬ don) British politician and prime minister (1964-70, 1974-76). The son of an industrial chemist, he was educated at the University of Oxford, where he collaborated with William H. Beveridge on work that led to the latter’s 1942 report. In World War II he was drafted into the civil service and pro¬ duced a study of the mining industry. His book New Deal for Coal (1945) was the basis for the Labour Party’s plan to nationalize the coal mines. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1945 and appointed president of the Board of Trade (1947-51). Elected leader of the Labour Party in 1963, he became prime minister in 1964. He widened the party’s voting majority in 1966 but his popularity declined in the late 1960s, partly because of his assumption of direct responsibility for the economy shortly before the pound was devalued in 1967. In his second term, he confirmed Britain’s membership in the European Economic Community (1975). He resigned unexpectedly in 1976 and was created a life peer in 1983.
Wilson, Harriet E. orig. Harriet E. Adams (b. 1828?, Milford, N.H.?, U.S.—d. 1863?, Boston, Mass.?) U.S. writer, probably the first African American to publish a novel in English in the U.S. Little is known of her history until 1850. She may have been an indentured servant in Milford, N.H., before becoming a domestic in Massachusetts. In 1851 she married a fugitive slave who ran off to sea before the birth of their son. Her one book, written to make money to reclaim her son from foster care, is Our Nig (1859), a largely autobiographical novel that treats racism in the pre-Civil War North. After 1863 Wilson disappeared from the public record.
Wilson, J(ohn) Tuzo (b. Oct. 24, 1908, Ottawa, Ont., Can.—d. April 15, 1993, Toronto, Ont.) Canadian geologist and geophysicist. He was the first graduate of a Canadian university in the field of geophysical studies (1930). After World War II he became a professor of geophysics at the University of Toronto. He established global patterns of faulting and the structure of the continents, and in the 1960s he became the world’s lead¬ ing spokesman for the theory of continental drift. His studies also were important for the hypothesis of seafloor spreading and the theory of con¬ vection currents within the Earth. A range of mountains in Antarctica is named for him.