All articles starting with W
11,426 articles
William Firth Wells
William Firth Wells (1887–1963) was an American sanitary engineer who founded the quantitative study of airborne infection, proposing that suspended droplet nuclei carry disease and demonstrating ultraviolet light kills airborne pathogens.
William Fogg Osgood
William Fogg Osgood (1864–1943) was an American mathematician at Harvard who proved the Riemann mapping theorem in 1900 and led work on complex function theory.
William Forsythe (actor)
William Forsythe (born 1955, Brooklyn) is an American character actor known for tough-guy roles in Once Upon a Time in America, Raising Arizona, Dick Tracy, The Rock, and The Devil's Rejects, and TV's Boardwalk Empire. Distinct from choreographer William Forsythe and director Bill Forsyth.
William Forsythe (choreographer)
William Forsythe, born 1949 in Long Island, New York, is an American choreographer who led Ballet Frankfurt from 1984 and created works in nearly every major ballet company's repertoire.
William Fothergill Cooke
William Fothergill Cooke (1806–1879) was an English inventor who, with Charles Wheatstone, patented the first practical electric telegraph and founded the Electric Telegraph Company in 1846.
William Fox (producer)
William Fox (Wilhelm Fried, 1879–1952), Hungarian-born American film mogul; founded Fox Film Corporation 1915, broke Edison's Trust, pioneered Movietone sound newsreels, lost his empire in 1930, imprisoned for bribing a judge.
William Fox-Pitt
William Fox-Pitt (born 1969), British eventing rider; first British World No 1 (2002, 2009, 2010, 2014), record six Burghley wins, 14 five-star titles, five Olympics, MBE 2019, retired from top level 2024.
William Francis Buckley
William Francis Buckley (1928-1985), US Army lieutenant colonel and CIA chief of station in Beirut, kidnapped by Islamic Jihad on 16 March 1984, tortured, died in captivity 3 June 1985; distinct from William F. Buckley Jr.
William Francis Gibbs
William Francis Gibbs (1886–1967) was an American naval architect and marine engineer who founded Gibbs & Cox and designed the record-breaking liner SS United States.
William Francis Gray Swann
William Francis Gray Swann (1884–1962) was an English-born American physicist who led the Bartol Research Foundation from 1927 to 1959 and served as president of the American Physical Society.
William Francis Hillebrand
William Francis Hillebrand was an American chemist who led rock analysis at the US Geological Survey and served as chief chemist of the National Bureau of Standards.
William Frank Brinkman
William Frank Brinkman, born 1938, is an American condensed matter physicist known for the Brinkman-Rice model and for directing the Department of Energy's Office of Science.
William Franklin
William Franklin (ca. 1730/31–1813), illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, was the thirteenth and last royal governor of New Jersey, appointed 9 September 1762, a Loyalist imprisoned 1776–1778 and later exiled in London.
William Franklyn-Miller
William Franklyn-Miller (Will Franklyn-Miller), British actor and model born 2004, known for Medici's Giovanni de' Medici, Arrow's Young Joseph Wilson, and as George Washington in Young Washington (2026).
William Frawley
William Frawley (1887–1966), American vaudevillian and character actor from Burlington, Iowa, played landlord Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy (1951–1957, five Emmy nominations) and Bub O'Casey on My Three Sons, after more than 150 Hollywood films.
William Frederick Denning
William Frederick Denning (1848–1931) was a British amateur astronomer in Bristol who discovered five comets, mapped meteor radiants, and won the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal in 1898.
William Frederick Durand
William Frederick Durand (1859–1958) was an American mechanical and aeronautical engineer and Stanford professor, known for the Durand–Lesley propeller tests, the six-volume Aerodynamic Theory, and leading NACA's wartime jet-engine program.
William Frederick Meggers
William Frederick Meggers was an American spectroscopist at the National Bureau of Standards who measured the spectra of about 50 elements and established iron lines as international wavelength standards.
William French Smith
William French Smith (1917–1990), also called Bill Smith, was the 74th U.S. Attorney General (1981–1985) under Ronald Reagan, his former personal lawyer and Kitchen Cabinet chairman, known for antitrust easing and the 1984 Crime Act.
William Frey (bishop)
William Carl Frey (1930–2020) was an American Episcopal bishop who served as the first Bishop of Guatemala, expelled in 1971, then as Bishop of Colorado from 1973 to 1990.
William Friedkin
William Friedkin (1935–2023), American New Hollywood director of The French Connection and The Exorcist; Oscar for Best Director; also made Sorcerer, Cruising, To Live and Die in L.A., Bug, Killer Joe.
William Fulton (mathematician)
William Fulton is an American algebraic geometer and University of Michigan professor emeritus whose 1984 book Intersection Theory won the American Mathematical Society's Steele Prize in 1996.
William Fyfe (geologist)
William Sefton Fyfe (1927–2013) was a New Zealand-born geochemist who made the role of fluids in the Earth's crust central to modern metamorphic petrology and geochemistry.
William G. Agnew
William G. Agnew was an American mechanical engineer who led engine combustion and emissions research at General Motors and joined the National Academy of Engineering in 1974.
William G. Anlyan
William G. Anlyan (1925–2016) was an American surgeon and academic administrator at Duke University, serving as the medical school's third dean and first Chancellor for Health Affairs.
William G. Austen
William G. Austen, known as W. Gerald Austen, was an American cardiac surgeon who led the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston for nearly 29 years.
William G. Barsan
William G. Barsan is an American emergency physician, founding chair of emergency medicine at the University of Michigan and a leader of stroke clinical trials.
William G. Baxt
William G. Baxt is an American emergency physician and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania known for introducing artificial neural networks into clinical diagnosis of heart attacks.
William G. Couser
William G. Couser (1939–2025) was an American nephrologist at the University of Washington whose research showed that glomerulonephritis immune deposits form in situ, and who later advanced kidney health in global policy.
William G. Dauben
William G. Dauben (William Garfield Dauben, 1919–1997) was an American organic chemist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, known for synthetic organic chemistry and helping establish organic photochemistry as a field.