All articles starting with W
11,426 articles
William S. Yancy
William S. Yancy Jr. is an American physician-investigator and Professor of Medicine at Duke University who studies dietary treatments for obesity and type 2 diabetes, including low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets.
William Sadler (actor)
William Thomas Sadler (born 1950, Buffalo, New York) is an American character actor known as the Grim Reaper in Bill & Ted, Heywood in The Shawshank Redemption, Colonel Stuart in Die Hard 2, and Sheriff Valenti in Roswell.
William Saliba
William Saliba, French centre-back for Arsenal and France (46 caps). Born in Bondy, Saint-Étienne academy, joined Arsenal 2019 for £27m after loans to Nice and Marseille; long-term 2025 contract, 2025/26 Premier League title, chronic back injury in 2026.
William Salice
William Salice was an Italian business executive who spent over 46 years at Ferrero, launching Kinder Sorpresa, and later founded the Color Your Life foundation.
William Sancroft
William Sancroft (1617–1693) was Archbishop of Canterbury who resisted James II in 1688 and was deprived in 1690 for refusing oaths to William and Mary.
William Sanday
William Sanday (1843–1920) was an Anglican priest and Oxford theologian who held chairs at Christ Church and led English New Testament criticism, writing on Romans and the Fourth Gospel.
William Sanders (archaeologist)
William Timothy Sanders (1926–2008) was an American anthropologist and Mesoamerican archaeologist who spent his career at Pennsylvania State University and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1985.
William Sanderson
William Sanderson (born 1944, Memphis) is an American character actor known as Larry on Newhart, J.F. Sebastian in Blade Runner, and E.B. Farnum in Deadwood; not the British actor of AI-generated profiles.
William Saroyan
William Saroyan (1908–1981), Armenian American writer and playwright from Fresno, author of The Time of Your Life, My Name Is Aram, and The Human Comedy; won and refused the 1940 Pulitzer Prize.
William Savitt
William (Bill) Savitt is an American corporate litigator, former co-chair of Wachtell Lipton's executive committee and litigation department, now co-chairing litigation at Gibson Dunn; known for the Twitter-Musk $44 billion merger suit and OpenAI's 2026 defense against Musk.
William Sayle
William Sayle, an English colonial administrator who died in 1671, served repeatedly as governor of Bermuda, led the Eleutheran Adventurers in settling the Bahamas, and became the first governor of Carolina.
William Schafer
William R. Schafer is an American neuroscientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge who studies how neural circuits control behavior using the worm C. elegans.
William Schaffner
William Schaffner is an American infectious disease epidemiologist and Vanderbilt professor who chaired preventive medicine for three decades and is a widely quoted vaccine expert.
William Schallert
William Schallert (1922-2016), American character actor of nearly 70 years, played Martin Lane on The Patty Duke Show, Nilz Baris in Star Trek's 'The Trouble with Tribbles,' and served as Screen Actors Guild president 1979-1981.
William Schief
William R. Schief is a professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, known for germline-targeting immunogen design for HIV vaccines.
William Scull (boxer)
William Scull (William Scull Yero, "El Indomable"), Cuban boxer born 1992 in Matanzas, based in Berlin. IBF super middleweight champion Oct 2024–May 2025; lost undisputed title to Canelo Alvarez in Riyadh in a record-low 445-punch fight.
William Sealy Gosset
William Sealy Gosset was a British statistician and Guinness brewer who, publishing under the pseudonym 'Student', created the t-test in his 1908 paper 'The Probable Error of a Mean'.
William Sellers
William Sellers (1824–1905) was an American mechanical engineer and manufacturer of Philadelphia whose 1864 screw-thread proposal became the United States Standard thread, making interchangeable parts practical.
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), English playwright, poet, and actor of Stratford-upon-Avon and London. Known for the 1623 First Folio, Globe playhouse, extensive co-authorship findings, and the unresolved authorship debate.
William Shatner
William Shatner (born March 22, 1931, Montreal) is a Canadian actor best known as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek (1966-69) and seven films, and as Emmy-winning Denny Crane on Boston Legal; in 2021 he became the oldest person in space.
William Shawn
William Shawn (born William Chon, 1907-1992), American editor who led The New Yorker from 1952 to 1987 after Harold Ross, known for exacting fact-checking, hires like Updike and Macdonald, the 1984 Reid fabrication affair, and his 1987 firing by S.I. Newhouse.
William Shih
William M. Shih is a DNA nanotechnology researcher at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute, known for a clonable DNA octahedron and 3D DNA origami.
William Shockley
William Shockley is an American physicist who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for the transistor effect and founded the first semiconductor company in Silicon Valley.
William Sigei
William Cheruiyot Sigei (born 1969), Kenyan long-distance runner, World Cross Country champion 1993 and 1994, and 10,000m world record holder with 26:52.23 set at Oslo's Bislett Games on 22 July 1994, broken by Gebrselassie in 1995.
William Silen
William Silen was an American surgeon and gastrointestinal physiologist who served as Chief of Surgery at Beth Israel Hospital and professor at Harvard Medical School.
William Simon (American businessman)
William Simon, known as Bill Simon, was an American financier, 63rd Secretary of the Treasury from 1974 to 1977, and co-founder of Wesray Capital, a leveraged buyout pioneer.
William Simons
William Simons (Clifford William Cumberbatch Simons, 1940–2019), Welsh actor; played PC Alf Ventress in all 18 series of ITV's Heartbeat (1992–2010, 355 episodes); also Crown Court, Cribb, The Inspector Alleyn Mysteries.
William Singe
William Singe (Liam Anthony Singe, born 1992), Australian R&B-pop singer and producer; ex-The Collective on X Factor Australia 2012, viral YouTube covers of 'Hotline Bling' and '679', RCA deal, Jonas Blue's 'Mama'.
William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim
William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim (1891-1970), British field marshal nicknamed Uncle Bill, commanded the Fourteenth Army in Burma, served as Chief of the Imperial General Staff 1948-52, and was Governor-General of Australia 1953-60.
William Smith
William Smith identifies several Olympic athletes: Canadian shooter William Alfred Smith (1908 bronze), British hockey gold medalist William Faulder Smith (1920), American swimmer Bill Smith (1948 double gold), and others across boxing, wrestling, golf, cycling, and track.