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Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1867-1959, American architect, b. Richland Center, Wis. Wright is widely considered the greatest American architect. After studying civil engineering at the Univ. of Wisconsin, he worked for seven years in the office of Dankmar Adler and Louis H. Sullivan in Chicago.

The Prairie Style

Wright's first independent commission was the Winslow residence (1893) in River Forest, Ill. Establishing himself in Oak Park, Ill., he built a series of residences with low horizontal lines and strongly projecting eaves that echoed the rhythms of the surrounding landscape; it was termed his prairie style. The most famous examples are located in Chicago and its suburbs; they include the Willitts house (1900?-1902), Highland Park; the Coonley house (1908), Riverside; and the Robie house (1909), Chicago.

Innovative Techniques and Styles

From the beginning Wright practiced radical innovation both as to structure and aesthetics, and many of his methods have since become internationally current. At a time when poured reinforced concrete and steel cantilevers were generally confined to commercial structures, Wright did pioneer work in integrating machine methods and materials into a true architectural expression. He was the first architect in the United States to produce open planning in houses, in a break from the traditional closed volume, and to achieve a fluidity of interior space by his frequent elimination of confining walls between rooms. For the Millard house (1923) at Pasadena, Calif., he worked out a new method, known as textile-block slab construction, consisting of double walls of precast concrete blocks tied together with steel reinforcing rods set into both the vertical and the horizontal joints.

Important Works

The Larkin Office Building (1904; destroyed 1950), Buffalo, and Oak Park Unity Temple (1908), near Chicago, were early monumental works that exerted wide influence. Among other notable works are the Imperial Hotel (1916-22; demolished 1968; partially reconstructed, Meiji Mura Mus., Inuyama, Japan), Tokyo, Japan, which withstood the effects of the 1923 earthquake; the Midway Gardens (1914; destroyed 1923), Chicago; and Wright's own residence "Taliesin" (1911; twice burned and rebuilt) at Spring Green, Wis. Among his later projects were "Taliesin West" (1936-59), Scottsdale, Ariz. (which has continued since his death as a school of architecture); the Johnson administration building (1936-39; research tower, 1950), Racine Wis.; and the house for Edgar Kaufmann, "Fallingwater" (1936-37), Bear Run, Pa., which is dramatically cantilevered over a waterfall.

After World War II, Wright continued a large and ever-inventive practice until his death. He created dynamic interior spaces with spiral ramps for the V. C. Morris Gift Shop (1948-49), San Francisco, and for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1946-59), New York City. Other notable later buildings include a Unitarian church (1947), Madison, Wis.; the Price Tower (1955), Bartlesville, Okla.; and Beth Sholom Synagogue (1959), Elkins Park, Pa. He left numerous unrealized projects, including one for a mile-high skyscraper ("The Illinois") for Chicago and an ambitious design for a civic center in Madison, Wis. The latter was later reconceived as the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center and opened in 1997.

Writings and Bibliography

Wright's architectural philosophy was expressed in his lectures and writings. Among them are On Architecture (1941); When Democracy Builds (1945); Genius and the Mobocracy (1949, enl. ed. 1971), an evaluation of his master Louis H. Sullivan; The Future of Architecture (1953); An American Architecture (1955); and A Testament (1957). His influence can be seen throughout Europe. Volumes illustrative of his works were published in France and Germany as early as 1910. In 1995 about 5,000 of his architectural drawings were published in CD-ROM form as Frank Lloyd Wright: Presentation and Conceptual Drawings.

See also his autobiography (enl. ed. 1977); biographies by his daughter, Iovanna Lloyd Wright (1962) and his wife, Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (rev. ed. 1970), F. Farr (1961), R. C. Twombly (1973), M. Secrest (1992), and A. L. Huxtable (2004); studies by H. R. Hitchcock (1942, repr. 1973); V. Scully (1960), P. Blake (rev. ed. 1964), H. A. Brooks (1972), D. L. Johnson (1990), and D. Hoffmann (1995); W. A. Storrer, a catalog of his buildings (1974, repr. 1978) and The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion (1994); bibliography by R. L. Sweeney (1978).

Woolworth, Frank Winfield, 1852-1919, American merchant, b. Rodman, N.Y. He established in 1879 a five-cent store at Utica, N.Y., which failed, and the same year he started a successful five-and-ten-cent store at Lancaster, Pa. Woolworth opened many others and soon extended business throughout the United States and to several foreign countries. In 1911 the F. W. Woolworth Company was incorporated with ownership of over 1,000 five-and-tens, and he became director of various financial firms. (The last Woolworth stores were closed in 1998.) Woolworth had the Woolworth Building erected in New York City in 1913, the highest building in the world (792 ft/241.4 m) at that time.

See J. K. Winkler, Five and Ten (1940, repr. 1970); J. P. Nichols, Skyline Queen and the Merchant Prince (1973); K. Plunkett-Powell, Remembering Woolworth's (1999).

Whittle, Sir Frank, 1907-, English aeronautical engineer. Whittle was one of the first men to associate the gas turbine with jet propulsion. Previously the gas turbine had been regarded as a machine for supplying shaft power, but Whittle saw it as an ideal means for providing jet propulsion in aircraft. As a Royal Air Force engineering officer, he patented in 1930 the basic designs for the turbojet engine. During the 1930s and early 1940s he and his associates constructed a number of turbojet engines and jet planes. These experiments led to the modern jet aircraft engine. The Germans and the Italians who constructed and flew the first jet aircraft used the basic engine designs that Whittle patented in the 1930s; the early American jet engines were also based on Whittle's work.
Wedekind, Frank, 1864-1918, German dramatist. He was also a journalist and publicist, and he worked on the staff of Simplicissimus. A forerunner of the expressionists, he employed grotesque fantasy and unconventional characters in order to attack the bourgeois ideals and hypocrisy of his society. Wedekind was particularly concerned with sexual themes, stressing the primacy of man's instincts. His plays include Frühlings Erwachen (1891, tr. The Awakening of Spring, 1909), Der Erdgeist (1895, tr. Earth Spirit, 1914), and Die Büchse der Pandora (1903, tr. Pandora's Box, 1918). Alban Berg compiled the libretto for his opera Lulu (1934) from the latter two.

See study by S. Gittleman (1969, repr. 1980).

Ward, Lester Frank, 1841-1913, American sociologist and paleontologist, b. Joliet, Ill. Largely self-educated, he eventually took degrees in medicine and law. He worked as a government geologist and paleontologist from 1881 to 1906, when he became professor of sociology at Brown. One of the first and most important of American sociologists, Ward developed a theory of planned progress called telesis, whereby man, through education and development of intellect, could direct social evolution. His theories and those of his contemporary, William Graham Sumner, represent two main trends in 19th-century American sociology. Among his important works are Dynamic Sociology (1883), Psychic Factors of Civilization (1893), Pure Sociology (1903), and Glimpses of the Cosmos (6 vol., 1913-18).

See S. Chugerman, Lester F. Ward, the American Aristotle (1939, repr. 1965).

Tannenbaum, Frank, 1893-1969, American historian, b. Austria. He received his Ph.D. from the Brookings School of Economics in 1927. After an early career as a labor leader, journalist, and economic adviser, he became an expert in institutional history and made notable studies of labor, slavery, and the penal system. He is known chiefly, however, as an expert on Latin America. His work in the 1930s as an adviser to the Mexican government led to his book Peace by Revolution: An Interpretation of Mexico (1933). He played a key role in the development of the Farm Security Bill during the New Deal and in the creation of the university seminars at Columbia. He was professor of Latin American history at Columbia from 1935 until his retirement in 1962. His major works include Slave and Citizen (1947), Mexico: The Struggle for Peace and Bread (1950), A Philosophy of Labor (1951), and Ten Keys to Latin America (1962).
Swinnerton, Frank, 1884-1982, English novelist and critic, b. Wood Green, Middlesex. In addition to serving variously as an editor and a drama critic he wrote over 30 novels. For half a century, Swinnerton's novels displayed the iconoclasm and sensuality of his modernist roots. They include Nocturne (1917), Harvest Comedy (1937), A Month in Gordon Square (1953), and Nor All Thy Tears (1972). He also wrote studies of Gissing (1912) and Stevenson (1914).
Stella, Frank, 1936-, American artist, b. Malden, Mass. In his early "black paintings" Stella exhibits the precision and rationality that characterized minimalism, employing parallel angular stripes to emphasize the rectangular shape of his large canvases. His innovative and influential use of irregularly shaped canvases first appeared in his metallic series in 1960. Later examples of his work stress color in decorative curved motifs. In the 1970s and 80s, Stella abandoned the studied, minimalist aesthetic in favor of a more improvised, dynamic, and dramatic idiom in mixed-media. During that time he abandoned flat paintings and instead created large, jutting, multipart, three-dimensional painting-constructions that often incorporate bright colors, enlarged versions of French curves, and lively brushstroke patterns.

Stella's work became fully three-dimensional in the early 1990s in a series of dense abstract sculptures composed of found and cast elements in stainless steel and bronze. These unpainted and often large-scale metal wall constructions, with their tangled, layered, and looping shapes, project an air of vibrant spontaneity. One of his most important and monumental sculptures is Prince of Homburg (1995-2001), installed outside the National Gallery of Art's East Building, Washington, D.C. Throughout his career, Stella also has been a prolific printmaker. The Whitney Museum, New York City, has several of his paintings, and his works are included in numerous museum and corporate collections worldwide.

See Frank Stella: An Illustrated Biography (1996) by S. Guberman; studies by W. Rubin (1980), L. Rubin, ed. (1986), and A. Pacquement (1988).

Sprague, Frank Julian, 1857-1934, American electrical engineer, b. Milford, Conn., grad. Annapolis, 1878. He was an assistant to Thomas Edison in 1883 and independently created a superior electric motor that was readily adaptable to industrial machinery. He also improved systems of electric energy and wheel suspension systems from which he developed the first electric street railway, installed at Richmond, Va., in 1887. He contributed greatly to the development of electric railways by inventing the multiple-unit system of automatic control, an automatic brake, and numerous other devices; he also developed the electric elevator.
Sinatra, Frank (Francis Albert Sinatra), 1915-98, American singer and actor, b. Hoboken, N.J. During the late 1930s and early 40s he sang with the Harry James and Tommy Dorsey bands, causing teenage girls to shriek and swoon over his romantic, seemingly casual renditions of such songs as "I'll Never Smile Again" and "This Love of Mine." During his long career he became one of the most successful pop music figures of the century, widely respected as a "singer's singer" for his richly detailed readings of lyrics and his versatile and nuanced musical style. Sinatra's sophisticated musicianship was evident in his many recordings. He had a long-lived and successful movie career, appearing in 58 films including On the Town (1949), From Here to Eternity (1953, Academy Award), Guys and Dolls (1955), Pal Joey (1957), The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and The Detective (1968). He also directed and produced several films. Sinatra retired from show business in 1971 but returned in several concert tours.

See A. I. Lonstein, The Compleat Sinatra (1970); G. Ringgold and C. McCarthy, The Films of Frank Sinatra (1971); R. Peters, The Frank Sinatra Scrapbook (1982); K. Kelley, His Way (1986); W. Friedwald, Sinatra! The Song Is You (1995); S. Petkov and L. Mustazza, ed., The Frank Sinatra Reader (1995); P. Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters (1998).

Robinson, Frank, 1935-, American baseball player and manager, b. Beaumont, Tex. Entering major-league baseball as an outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds, Robinson was named the National League's rookie of the year in 1956 and most valuable player (MVP) in 1961. Traded to the American League's Baltimore Orioles in 1965, he won the batting triple crown and the MVP award in 1966, becoming the first player ever to be voted MVP in both leagues. After stints with the Los Angeles Dodgers (1972) and California Angels (1973-74), he played (1974-76) for the Cleveland Indians, where he also became (1975-77) the first African-American manager in major-league history. Robinson subsequently managed the San Francisco Giants (1981-84) and Orioles (1988-91) and was manager of the year in 1982 and 1989. From 1991 to 1994 he was assistant general manager with the Orioles. He became director of baseball operations for the Arizona Fall League and consultant to the commissioner for special projects in major-league baseball's central office in 1997 and vice president for on-field operations in 2000. From 2002 to 2006 he was manager of the Montreal Expos, who moved to Washington, D.C., and became the Nationals after 2004.
O'Malley, Frank Ward, 1875-1932, American newspaperman, b. Pittston, Pa. As reporter (1906-19) for the New York Sun he was especially noted for his stories of humor and pathos. Among his books is The Swiss Family O'Malley (1928).
O'Hara, Frank 1926-66, American poet, b. Baltimore, grad. Harvard (B.A., 1950), Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor (M.A., 1951). His poetry is spontaneous, vernacular, witty, personal, and very much of its time and place—New York City, 1951-66. Closely associated with many of the painters of his time, O'Hara was a founder of the Poet's Theatre and later the center of the New York School of Poets (consisting of himself, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler). His writings include Collected Poems (1971), Early Writing (1977), Poems Retrieved (1977), and Selected Poems (2008).

See biography by B. Gooch (1993); memoir by J. LeSueur (2003); M. Perloff, Frank O'Hara: Poet among Painters (1997); D. Lehman, The Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (1999); G. Ward, Statutes of Liberty: The New York School of Poets (2d ed. 2001).

O'Connor, Frank, 1903-66, Irish short-story writer, whose name originally was Michael O'Donovan. He was a librarian in Dublin and later a director of the Abbey Theatre (1936-39). O'Connor is noted primarily for his short stories—witty, tender, and penetrating studies of Irish life. He also published poetry, critical works, and volumes of Irish history.

See his autobiography, An Only Child (1961); biography by J. McKeon (1999).

Norris, Frank (Benjamin Franklin Norris), 1870-1902, American novelist, b. Chicago. After studying in Paris, at the Univ. of California (1890-94), and at Harvard, he spent several years as a war correspondent in South Africa (1895-96) and Cuba (1898). His proletarian novel McTeague (1899) was influenced by the experimental naturalism of Zola. His most impressive works were two parts of a proposed novelistic trilogy entitled "The Epic of Wheat"—The Octopus (1901), depicting the brutal struggle between wheat farmers and the railroad, and The Pit (1903), dealing with speculation on the Chicago grain market. The trilogy and Norris's burgeoning literary career were cut short by his death from a ruptured appendix. The Responsibilities of the Novelist (1903). an essay collection, contains his idealistic views on the role of the writer.

See biography by J. R. McElrath, Jr. and J. S. Crisler (2005); study by B. Hochman (1988).

Musial, Stanley Frank, 1920-, American baseball player, b. Donora, Pa. At 17 he signed with the St. Louis Cardinals of the National League, and after three years in the minor leagues joined (1941) the Cardinals. One of the game's great hitters, "Stan the Man" won the National League batting championship seven times (1943, 1946, 1948, 1950-52, 1957) and the league's Most Valuable Player award three times (1943, 1946, 1948). In 1963 he retired with a lifetime batting average of .331. He hit 475 home runs and for many years held the National League record for base hits (3,630). He was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969.
Murphy, Frank, 1890-1949, American political figure, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1940-49), b. Harbor Beach, Mich. After serving as a U.S. attorney (1919-20) and as a judge of recorder's court (1923-30), he was elected mayor of Detroit in 1930 and was widely recognized for his relief efforts. He resigned to become governor-general (1933-35) and later (1935-36) U.S. high commissioner in the Philippine Islands. Elected governor of Michigan in 1936, his settlement of the automobile strike (1937) in Flint, Mich., made him a national figure. In Jan., 1939, Murphy, a New Deal Democrat, was appointed U.S. Attorney General and served until his appointment to the Supreme Court. For a short time in 1942 he left the bench to serve as an army officer. Justice Murphy's opinions reflected his ardent liberalism. In his dissenting opinion in Korematsu v. United States (1944), he stated that the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans was unconstitutional.

See study by S. Fine (1979).

Munsey, Frank Andrew, 1854-1925, American publisher and author, b. Mercer, Maine. In 1882 he quit a telegraph operator's job in Maine to begin a career as publisher in New York City. He started the Golden Argosy (1882) as a juvenile magazine, for which he wrote serials himself, changed it to the Argosy for adults, and supplanted this with Munsey's Magazine (1889). Munsey cut the price from 25 cents to 10 cents (1893), and the magazine became a success. He bought and sold newspapers and magazines with his fortune. When one of his magazines failed, he scrapped it and started another; he thus disposed of Godey's Magazine, All-Story Magazine, and many others. Using the wealth he had made from his magazines and other investments, he bought several newspapers, hoping to found a chain of them. However, he lost a great deal on the Boston Journal and the New York Daily News (1901). The Washington Times and the Baltimore Evening News were among his successful papers. In 1916, he began buying papers to consolidate. He merged the New York Press in the Sun, and in 1920 the unsuccessful Sun in the New York Herald. He also sold his Baltimore papers to William Randolph Hearst. After he died, most of his fortune went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

See biography by G. Britt, Forty Years, Forty Millions (1935, repr. 1971).

Mott, Frank Luther, 1886-1964, American author and professor of journalism, b. near What Cheer, Iowa. He directed (1927-42) the school of journalism at the State Univ. of Iowa and was dean (1942-51) of the school of journalism at the Univ. of Missouri. With John T. Frederick he edited and published (1925-30) the Midland. He then served (1930-35) as editor of Journalism Quarterly. His best-known works include American Journalism (rev. ed. 1950); The News in America (1952); and A History of American Magazines (4 vol., 1930-57), for which he was awarded (1939) the Pulitzer Prize in American history.

See his Time Enough (1962), autobiographical essays.

Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr., 1868-1953, American art critic and teacher, b. Deep River, Conn., grad. Williams, 1889, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1892. He taught (1893-1900) at Williams and was professor (1910-33) of art and archaeology at Princeton. Art critic of the New York Evening Post and other papers, he also wrote many books.
Lowden, Frank Orren, 1861-1943, American political leader, b. Chisago co., Minn. He practiced law in Chicago after 1887 and gained extensive agricultural holdings in Illinois. A leading member of the Republican party from 1900, Lowden served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1906-11) and as governor of Illinois (1917-21). He gained wide notice as governor by his reorganization of the state government and by his effective handling of the Chicago race riots in 1919. A contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 1920, he was deadlocked with Leonard Wood at 3111/2 votes on the eighth ballot, which enabled Warren G. Harding to gain the nomination. In 1924 he refused to run as Vice President on the Republican ticket, but he remained an influential party leader and a spokesman of the farmer.

See biography by W. T. Hutchinson (1957).

Loesser, Frank (Frank Henry Loesser), 1910-69, American lyricist and songwriter, b. New York City. He is noted for smart, often witty lyrics that catch the tone and rhythms of vernacular speech. Loesser rejected the classical music training of his pianist father and brother and began writing show tunes during the year he spent at New York's City College. He moved to Hollywood in 1936 and from the late 1930s to the early 50s wrote songs for dozens of films. Among his earliest movie hits was "Two Sleepy People" (1938; written with Hoagy Carmichael). While a soldier in World War II he begin writing music in addition to words for such songs as "Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition." Loesser won an Oscar for "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (1949) and wrote the score for his last movie musical, Hans Christian Andersen, in 1952. His first Broadway hit came with the score for Where's Charley? (1948; film, 1952) and he struck Broadway gold with the scores for Guys and Dolls (1950; film, 1955); The Most Happy Fella (1956), for which he also wrote the book; and How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1962, Pulitzer Prize; film, 1967).

See his biography by his daughter, S. Loesser (1993, repr. 2001); The Frank Loesser Songbook (1994).

Lillie, Frank Rattray, 1870-1947, American zoologist and educator, b. Toronto, B.A. Univ. of Toronto, 1891, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1894. He taught, conducted research, and was an administrator at the Univ. of Chicago from 1900. His embryological investigations reached into all aspects of cellular and embryonic development, including the role of the sex hormones. He is best known for his dedicated efforts in shaping the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Oceanographic Institute at Woods Hole, Mass. In addition to many scientific papers, he wrote The Development of the Chick (1908, 3d ed. 1952), a leading text in embryology, and The Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory (1944).
Libby, Willard Frank, 1908-80, American chemist, b. Grand Valley, Colo., grad. Univ. of California (B.S., 1931; Ph.D., 1933). He taught (1933-45) at the Univ. of California and was a chemist (1941-45) in the war research division at Columbia. From 1945 to 1954 he was with the Univ. of Chicago and was a member of the committee of reviewers for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); he was then (1954-59) an AEC commissioner. In 1959 he joined the faculty of the Univ. of California at Los Angeles. Libby was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development (c.1946) of radioactive carbon-14 dating. He was the recipient of several other prizes, including the 1959 Albert Einstein award. Libby wrote Radiocarbon Dating (1955).
Leslie, Frank, 1821-80, American engraver and publisher, b. England. He learned his trade on the Illustrated London News, but in 1848 immigrated to New York City, where in 1855 he began publishing Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, one of the first influential newsweeklies. His real name, Henry Carter, was discarded when his pseudonym, Frank Leslie, became widely known. He inaugurated a method for speedily illustrating current events by dividing his drawings into blocks that could be distributed among a number of engravers and afterward reassembled. His profits and fame were greatest when, during the Civil War, his artists on the battlefields sent back illustrations. They now have great historical value. He went bankrupt in 1877. His second wife, Miriam Florence (Folline) Leslie, continued his business interests after his death.
Leahy, Frank William, 1908-73, American football coach, b. O'Neill, Nebr. He was an assistant coach at Georgetown Univ. (1931-32), Michigan State College (now Michigan State Univ., 1933), and Fordham Univ. (1934-38), and after his success as head coach (1939-41) at Boston College he was made (1941) athletic director and head coach at Notre Dame, his alma mater. Under Leahy, one of the leading exponents of the T formation in college football, Notre Dame regained the dominant position it had enjoyed in the days of his old coach, Knute Rockne. In four complete seasons through 1949, Notre Dame played 39 straight games without a defeat and with only two ties. Leahy retired from coaching after 1953; in the 13 years that he coached Notre Dame, his teams won 107 games, lost 13, and tied 9.
Lateur, Frank: see Streuvels, Stijn.
Kupka, Frank or František, 1871-1957, Czech painter, etcher, and illustrator. Kupka illustrated works by Reclus and Leconte de Lisle and an edition of Aristophanes' Lysistrata. In 1911 he joined the orphism movement led by Delaunay. He was one of the first painters to explore pure geometric abstraction. His decorative style was affected by the "machine esthetic" of the 1920s. Kupka is well represented in the Musée national d'Art moderne, Paris, and in the National Gallery, Prague.
Knox, Frank (William Franklin Knox), 1874-1944, U.S. Secretary of the Navy (1940-44), b. Boston. He joined the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War and also served in World War I. Knox was general manager (1928-31) of the Hearst papers and after 1931 owner of the Chicago Daily News. A strong opponent of the New Deal, he was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Vice President in 1936. In 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, seeking to create national unity in defense preparations, made Knox Secretary of the Navy. He died in office and was succeeded by James V. Forrestal.
Knight, Frank Hyneman, 1885-1972, American economist, b. McLean County, Ill., Ph.D. Cornell Univ., 1916. He taught economics at the Univ. of Chicago (1927-62). Knight's most influential work was his first book, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921), in which he described the relationship between profits and risk in a free market economy. He distinguished insurable risk from uninsurable risk, contending that the latter produced profits. His methodology was the foundation of the Chicago school of economics, which held that competition in a free market economy was the best method for achieving economic health.
Kermode, Sir Frank, 1919-, English critic, b. Isle of Man. Educated at Liverpool and a lieutenant in the Royal Navy during World War II, Kermode is one of the most distinguished critics of our time. He has taught at numerous universities, including Harvard, Cambridge, and Columbia, and is author or editor of some forty volumes. Best known are his studies of Shakespeare (1963-65) and D. H. Lawrence (1973), his editorship of The Oxford Anthology of English Literature (2 vol. 1973), and his provocative studies The Sense of an Ending (1967), The Genesis of Secrecy (1979), and The Art of Telling (1983). Kermode's memoir, Not Entitled, was published in 1995 and his selection of essays, Pieces of My Mind, appeared in 2003. He was knighted in 1991.
Kellogg, Frank Billings, 1856-1937, American lawyer, U.S. Senator (1917-23), and cabinet member, b. Potsdam, N.Y. As a child, he moved to Olmstead co., Minn. He later studied law and held several municipal posts. He entered private law practice in St. Paul, Minn., where he became an outstanding corporation lawyer and gained stature in the Republican party. Appointed (1904) special counsel to the U.S. Attorney General, Kellogg played an important role in antitrust prosecution, particularly in the dissolution of the General Paper and the Standard Oil companies. As special counsel to the Interstate Commerce Commission, he was active in the investigation of the railroads controlled by Edward H. Harriman. Elected U.S. Senator, he was one of the few Republicans who supported the League of Nations, although he believed minor changes were needed to permit U.S. entry. After serving (1924-25) as ambassador to Great Britain, he succeeded (1925) Charles E. Hughes as Secretary of State. He bettered relations with Mexico and helped to settle the Tacna-Arica Controversy between Chile and Peru. Largely for his successful promotion of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, he was awarded the 1929 Nobel Peace Prize. He resigned his cabinet post in 1929 and afterward served (1930-35) as a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice. He established a foundation for the study of international relations at Carleton College in Minnesota.

See biography by D. Bryn-Jones (1937); L. E. Ellis, Frank B. Kellogg and American Foreign Relations, 1925-1929 (1961).

Hitchcock, Frank Harris, 1867-1935, U.S. Postmaster General (1909-13), b. Amherst, Ohio. After service in the Dept. of Agriculture (1897-1903), the Dept. of Commerce and Labor (1903-5), and as Assistant Postmaster General (1905-8), he became Postmaster General. He organized the parcel post and the postal savings bank system and urged the initiation of an airmail system.
Harris, Frank, 1856-1931, British-American author, b. Galway, Ireland. He studied at the Univ. of Kansas, became a U.S. citizen, and returning to England, edited successively a number of periodicals. A controversial figure in both his private life and his writings, he is primarily known for his scandalously frank and highly unreliable autobiography, My Life and Loves (3 vol., 1923-27), which was banned in the United States and England for many years. Much of his other work, such as his first novel, The Bomb (1908), shows a similar leaning toward eroticism. His biographical series Contemporary Portraits (1915-27), portraying such men as Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, and Kipling, many of whom he knew, and his biography of Oscar Wilde (1916) reveal his facility for maliciousness and imaginative speculation. Among his other works are the volume of short stories, Montes the Matador (1900), and the novel Great Days (1913).
Hague, Frank, 1876-1956, American politician, mayor of Jersey City, N.J., b. Jersey City. He worked his way up through the ranks of the local Democratic machine and was elected (1913) to the city board of commissioners. As mayor of Jersey City (1917-47), Hague built one of the strongest urban political machines in the nation. After his election to the Democratic National Committee in 1922, he was the most powerful Democrat in the state and a force to be reckoned with at national conventions. Accused of corruption and large-scale intimidation of municipal employees, Hague was a controversial figure. He lost much of his power in the 1949 elections, when his nephew, Frank Hague Eggers, was defeated in the mayoralty race; and in 1952 the state Democratic organization ousted him from his post as national committeeman.

See biography by R. J. Connors (1971); study by D. D. McKean (1940, repr. 1967).

Graves, Frank Pierrepont, 1869-1956, American educator, b. Brooklyn, N.Y., grad. Columbia (B.A., 1890; Ph.D., 1912). He taught Greek and classical philology at Tufts College (1891-96), was president of the Univ. of Wyoming (1896-98) and of the Univ. of Washington (1898-1903), and later served as professor of education and dean at the Univ. of Missouri, Ohio State Univ., and the Univ. of Pennsylvania. From 1921 until his retirement in 1940 he was commissioner of education and president of the Univ. of the State of New York. He wrote several works on both the Greek language and the history of education, as well as three volumes of addresses and papers.
Goodnow, Frank Johnson, 1859-1939, American expert on government; grad. Amherst (B.A., 1879; M.A., 1887) and Columbia (LL.B., 1882). After study abroad, he taught administrative law at Columbia for 30 years, was an adviser (1913-14) to the revolutionary Chinese government on drafting the new constitution, and was president (1914-29) of Johns Hopkins Univ. He is best remembered as a pioneer in the study of modern municipal government. Among his many books are Politics and Administration (1900, repr. 1967) and Social Reform and the Constitution (1911, repr. 1970).
Gehry, Frank Owen, 1929-, American architect, b. Toronto, Canada as Frank Owen Goldberg. He is widely considered one of the finest and most artful of contemporary architects. In 1947, Gehry's family moved to Los Angeles, where he attended the Univ. of California; he later studied at Harvard. He has been acclaimed for his original, sophisticated, adventurous, and very American buildings. Extremely varied and lively, his structures contrast space and materials; often jutting, unusual shapes are juxtaposed with simple geometric forms. In his earlier work these forms are expressed in a wide range of usual and unusual architectural materials (e.g., raw plywood, corrugated aluminum, and exposed pipe) that sometimes give these buildings a deliberately unfinished quality. Among his many important commissions are the Loyola Law School (1981-84), Walt Disney Concert Hall (1989), and the Team Disneyland Building (1995), Los Angeles; "Gehry's Fish" (1992), Barcelona; the Weisman Museum of Art (1993), Minneapolis, the first of his all metal-clad buildings; and the Cinémathèque Français (the former American Center. 1994), Paris.

Gehry's later work displays a curving complexity made possible by computer programs and other innovative design tools, many of which he and his team have developed. While these metal-clad buildings have distinct similarities, they differ significantly in shape, proportion, materials, and relation to the sites they occupy. His most important and acclaimed building to date is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain (1997), a large structure of voluptuous, swooping, organic forms covered in gleaming titanium steel that made him an international star. Gehry also uses curving metal-covered walls in his Experience Music Project rock music museum in Seattle (2000). His design for the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (2003) at Bard College combines the characteristic billowing steel shapes at its facade with the unadorned concrete that forms the rear of the building. The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003) has a sumptuous matte-finish stainless steel facade comprised of several large upward-curving elements punctuated by a hinged glass-panel entry, and a beautiful, acoustically superb interior clad in Douglas fir.

The architect returned to geometric forms in the computer-assisted complexity of his Stata Center (2004), Cambridge, Mass., the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's computer-science building—a tilting and colorful conglomeration of towers, cubes, tubes, and cones in steel, aluminum, and brick whose open interior spaces are designed to promote encounters among its scientist inhabitants. Gehry's first completed New York City project, the InterActiveCorp headquarters in Manhattan (2006-07), is characterized by a façade of billowing white glass that glows with inner light. Gehry also designs furniture and other utilitarian objects as well as watches and jewelry. Prominent among his many awards are the Pritzker Prize (1989) and the first Gish Award (1994).

See M. Friedman, ed., Gehry Talks: Architecture + Process (1999); Sketches of Frank Gehry (documentary film, dir. by S. Pollack, 2006).

Frank, Tenney, 1876-1939, American historian, b. Clay Center, Kans. After 1919 he was a professor at Johns Hopkins Univ. Among his best-known works are A History of Rome (1923), Economic History of Rome (1920, rev. ed. 1927), and Catullus and Horace (1928, repr. 1965).
Frank, Robert, 1924-, Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker. Frank is considered the pioneer of the "snapshot aesthetic," in which the documentary image is rendered bluntly and without conscious artistry. His best-known work is The Americans (1959), a composite portrait of U.S. culture made in terms of telling glimpses of clutter and trivia. These powerfully composed images were considered gross and shocking when they were first published; they soon became an intrinsic part of American iconography, greatly influencing other artists in many media. Frank's films, also documentary in style, include Pull My Daisy (1959-60, with Alfred Leslie), OK, End Here (1963), and Me and My Brother (1965-68).

See his book of photographs Lines of My Hand (1972).

Frank, Leonhard, 1882-1961, German expressionist writer. He gained acclaim with his first novel, The Robber Band (1914, tr. 1928), and it was followed by such works as The Cause of the Crime (1920, tr. 1928), A Middle-Class Man (1924, tr. 1930), and Carl and Anna (1927, tr. 1929), his best-known novel, which he dramatized in 1929. In the Last Coach (1925, tr. 1935) is a volume of short stories. His writing is psychological in approach, antiwar, and shows a compassion for victims of an authoritarian society. Frank fled Germany in 1933 and did not return until after World War II.
Frank, Jacob, c.1726-1791, Polish Jewish sectarian and adventurer, b. Podolia as Jacob Ben Judah Leib. He founded the Frankists, a heretical Jewish sect that was an anti-Talmudic outgrowth of the mysticism of the false Messiah Sabbatai Zevi. After traveling in Turkey, where he was called Frank and where he joined the Sabbatean sect, he returned (c.1755) to Podolia. Posing as a Messiah, Frank gathered a following, by whom he was addressed as "holy master." Professing to find in the kabbalah the doctrine of Trinitarianism and feigning conversion to Roman Catholicism, he and the Frankists were baptized (1759). The church, however, soon became suspicious of its new converts' sincerity, and in 1760, Frank was arrested in Warsaw on a charge of heresy and imprisoned in the fortress of Czestochowa; he was released (1773) after that section of Poland became Russian. Moving to Moravia, he enjoyed the favor of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who believed him a disseminator of Christianity. When she discovered his sectarianism, Frank fled to Offenbach, Germany, where he lived in luxury, supported by Polish and Moravian Frankists. Upon his death his daughter Eve became "holy mistress" of the Frankists. She died in 1816, and the sect eventually disappeared, most of its members having actually become Catholics. Many of them later became prominent members of the Polish nobility.
Frank, Glenn, 1887-1940, American editor and educator, b. Queen City, Mo., grad. Northwestern Univ., 1912. He was assistant to the president of Northwestern Univ. from 1912 to 1916. In 1919, Frank joined the staff of the Century Magazine, becoming editor in 1921. In 1925 he was appointed president of the Univ. of Wisconsin, where he initiated the university's famous Experimental College and instituted changes in the teaching of agriculture. Ousted from his position by Gov. Philip Fox Follette in 1937, Frank became editor of Rural Progress. He was also active in the Republican party and was campaigning for the position of Senator from Wisconsin when he died in an automobile accident. His works include The Politics of Industry (1919), An American Looks at His World (1923), and America's Hour of Decision (1934).

See biography by L. H. Larsen (1965).

Frank, Bruno, 1887-1945, German novelist and dramatist. His popular works include the historical novels The Days of the King (1924, tr. 1927), Trenck (1926, tr. 1928), and A Man Called Cervantes (1934, tr. 1934) and the play Twelve Thousand (1927, tr. 1928). A Jew, he was exiled (1933) from Germany and came to the United States in 1937.
Frank, Anne, 1929-45, German diarist, b. Frankfurt as Anneliese Marie Frank. In order to escape Nazi persecution, her family emigrated (1933) to Amsterdam, where her father Otto became a business owner. After the Nazis occupied the Netherlands, her family (along with several other Jews) hid for just over two years (1942-44) in a "secret annex" that was part of her father's office and warehouse building. During those years, Anne kept a diary characterized by poignancy, insight, humor, touching naiveté, and sometimes tart observation. The family was betrayed to the Germans in 1944, and at 15 Anne died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

Anne's diary was discovered by one of the family's helpers and after the war was given to her father, the only immediate family member to survive the Holocaust. Edited by him, The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) became an international bestseller and has been translated into English (1952) and 66 other languages. It was also adapted into a play (1955) and a film (1959). A critical edition was published in 1986, and a complete edition, containing almost a third more material, appeared in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of her death. Anne Frank also wrote stories, fables, and essays, which were published in 1959. The Franks' Amsterdam hiding place is now a museum, there is a foundation established by her father, and institutions devoted to her exist in New York, Berlin, London, and other cities.

See biographies by M. Müller (tr. 1998) and C. A. Lee (1999); M. Gies, Anne Frank Remembered (1988); R. Van Der Rol and R. Verhoeven, Anne Frank, Beyond the Diary: A Photographic Remembrance (1995); C. A. Lee, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank (2003); W. Lindwer, The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank (documentary film, 1988 and book, 1992); J. Blair, dir., Anne Frank Remembered (documentary film, 1995).

Fay, Frank, 1870-1931, and W. G. Fay, 1872-1947, brothers, both Irish actors. The Fay brothers formed the Irish National Theatre, an amateur group founded on the conviction that only Irish actors could perform in Irish plays. Around the nucleus of this company Dublin's Abbey Theatre was formed in 1904 with W. G. Fay as its guiding force. The Fays emigrated to the United States in 1908, where they appeared in a repertory of Irish plays.

See W. G. Fay and C. Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre (1935, repr. 1971).

Fackenthal, Frank Diehl, 1883-1968, American educator, b. Hellertown, Pa., grad. Columbia, 1906. He served Columbia as chief clerk (1906-10), secretary (1910-37), and provost (1937-48). Between the retirement of Nicholas Murray Butler (1945) and the installation of General Eisenhower as president (1948), Dr. Fackenthal was acting president of the university, retaining his post as provost. After his retirement (1948) from the university he served as educational consultant to the Carnegie Corp. (1948-52) and then as president of the Columbia Univ. Press (1953-58). His principal speeches as acting president were published as The Greater Power and Other Addresses (1949).
Dyson, Sir Frank Watson, 1868-1939, English astronomer, b. Ashby-de-la-Zouch, grad. Cambridge. He was astronomer royal of Scotland (1905-10) and of England (from 1910). As director (1910-33) of Greenwich Observatory he greatly expanded its research activities and inaugurated (1928) the wireless transmission of Greenwich time. Noted for his study of solar eclipses, he was an authority on the spectrum of the corona and on the chromosphere; his observations of an eclipse (in Brazil, 1919) confirmed Einstein's theory of the effect of gravity on light. Dyson plotted the motions of many previously uncharted stars. A fellow of the Royal Society from 1901, he was knighted in 1915. His publications include Astronomy: A Handy Manual (1910) and Eclipses of the Sun and Moon (with Richard Woolley, 1937).
Duveneck, Frank, 1848-1919, American portrait and genre painter and teacher, b. Covington, Ky., studied in Cincinnati and in Munich. In 1875 he showed a group of his canvases in Boston, where they created a sensation because of their bold brushwork, rich color, and forceful presentation of personality. He taught for many years in Munich and, after 1889, in Cincinnati. His influence on his contemporaries was great, particularly on William Chase and his followers and on the ashcan school. His Whistling Boy (Cincinnati Art Mus.) and Old Woman (Metropolitan Mus.) are characteristic of his portrait studies.
Damrosch, Frank Heino, 1859-1937, German-American conductor and educator, attended the College of the City of New York; son of Leopold Damrosch. In 1885, after a few years in Denver, he became chorus master and assistant conductor of the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, remaining in that position until 1891. He organized the Musical Art Society, an a cappella chorus, in 1893. He supervised (1897-1905) the music of the public schools of New York and conducted (1898-1912) the Oratorio Society and the Symphony Concerts for Young People. His most important work was the founding in 1905, with James Loeb, of the Institute of Musical Art (later a unit of the Juilliard School), which he directed until 1933.
Capra, Frank, 1897-1991, American film director, b. Bisaquino, Sicily. One of the preeminent Hollywood directors of the 1930s and 40s, he produced idealistic populist movies that, sometimes amusingly and sometimes sentimentally but nearly always optimistically, celebrate the virtues of the common American. His family emigrated to the United States in 1903 and settled in Los Angeles. Starting in the movies in the early 1920s, he became a feature film director with Harry Langdon comedies, achieved commercial success with Platinum Blonde (1931), and won his first Academy Award with the "screwball" romantic comedy It Happened One Night (1934).

Capra's naively decent American heroes triumph over the forces of greed, cynicism, corruption, or self-doubt in such films as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936; Academy Award), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), and the richly textured classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Among his movie-making innovations were accelerated pacing, conversational and sometimes overlapping dialogue, and previews that gauged audience reaction. Capra's many other films include Lost Horizon (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938; Academy Award), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), State of the Union (1948), A Hole in the Head (1959), and his last, Pocketful of Miracles (1961).

See his autobiography (1971); biography by J. McBride (1992, repr. 2000); C. Wolfe, Frank Capra: A Guide to References and Resources (1987).

Burns, Arthur Frank, 1904-87, American economist, b. Austria, grad. Columbia Univ. (A.B., 1925; A.M., 1925; Ph.D., 1934). He taught economics at Rutgers Univ. (1927-44), and then joined (1944) the faculty of Columbia, where he became John Bates Clark professor of economics in 1959. A member of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1933, he was director of research (1945-53) and president (1957-67) of that organization. Under President Eisenhower, Burns was chairman (1953-56) of the Council of Economic Advisers. He returned to government service as economic counselor (1969-70) to President Nixon. As chairman (1970-78) of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System, he advocated fiscal and monetary restraint. He later (1981-85) served as ambassador to West Germany.
Buckley, William Frank, Jr., 1925-2008, American editor, author, and lecturer, b. New York City, grad. Yale, 1946. A popular, eloquent, and witty spokesman for the conservative point of view, Buckley helped found the modern conservative movement and played an important part in promoting the growth of American conservatism during the second half of the 20th century. He first came to national attention with the publication of his book God and Man at Yale (1951), a scathing attack on his alma mater for what he alleged were its secular outlook and left-wing political bias. An editor for The American Mercury (1951-52), he founded (1955) the National Review, which soon became the leading journal of conservativism in the United States; he edited the magazine until 1990 and had a controlling interest in it until 2004. In 1965 he was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of New York City, a campaign he described in The Unmaking of a Mayor (1966). He hosted (1966-99) the Emmy-winning public-affairs television show "Firing Line," and wrote (1962-2008) a syndicated column, "On the Right." He wrote more than 50 books, both fiction and nonfiction. His novelistic accounts of the adventures of an American spy during the cold war include Saving the Queen (1976), Marco Polo, If You Can (1982), A Very Private Plot (1994), and Last Call for Blackford Oakes (2005). He also wrote The Redhunter (1999), a largely favorable fictional presentation of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's activities.

See his Nearer, My God (1997) and Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography (2004); biographies by J. Judis (1988) and L. Bridges and J. R. Coyne, Jr. (2008).

Buchman, Frank Nathan Daniel, 1878-1961, American evangelist, b. Pennsburg, Pa. The international movement he founded has been variously called First Century Christian Fellowship, the Oxford Group, Moral Re-Armament (often known as MRA), and Buchmanism. Buchman was ordained in the Lutheran ministry in 1902. He was head (1905-15) of religious work at Pennsylvania State College (now Pennsylvania State Univ.). In 1921, Buchman, after five years of extension lecturing for the Hartford Theological Foundation, visited England. There he preached "world-changing through life-changing" among the students at Oxford, hence the name Oxford Group. In 1938 he instituted a campaign known as Moral Re-Armament. The work of evangelism for personal and national spiritual reconstruction is conducted informally and intimately in groups gathered in educational institutions, in church congregations, or in homes. "House parties" take the place of conferences, and religious experiences are shared in personal confessions. The evangelists stress absolute honesty, purity, love, and unselfishness. Moral Re-Armament has always been a controversial organization, resulting from its strident anti-Communist positions as well as from Buchman's open admiration of Adolf Hitler.

See his speeches, Remaking the World (new and rev. ed. 1961); P. Howard, Frank Buchman's Secret (1962); G. Ekman, Experiment with God: Frank Buchman Reconsidered (tr. 1972).

Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank Baum), 1856-1919, American journalist, playwright, and author of children's stories, b. Chittenango, N.Y. He and his family moved to South Dakota in 1888, where he ran a newspaper, and to Chicago in 1891, where he worked as a journalist. His first children's book, Mother Goose in Prose (1897), was followed by Father Goose: His Book (1899), which was an immediate bestseller. In 1900 he published his most famous work, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a story about a little girl carried by a tornado to the magical land of Oz. Baum's dramatization of the book was produced in 1902; the story was also made into an extraordinarily popular motion picture in 1938. Although he wrote more than 70 children's books, Baum's fame rests largely on The Wizard and his 13 other stories of Oz, including Ozma of Oz (1907) and The Scarecrow of Oz (1915), all of which emphasize such American virtues as practicality, self-reliance, tolerance, and egalitarianism.

See M. P. Hearn, ed., The Annotated Wizard of Oz (1973); biography by K. M. Rogers (2002).

(born June 8, 1867, Richland Center, Wis., U.S.—died April 9, 1959, Phoenix, Ariz.) U.S. architect. After studying engineering briefly at the University of Wisconsin, he worked for the firm of Dankmar Adler (1844–1900) and Louis Sullivan in Chicago before opening his own practice there in 1893. Wright became the chief practitioner of the Prairie school, building about 50 Prairie houses from 1900 to 1910. Early nonresidential buildings include the forward-looking Larkin Building in Buffalo, N.Y. (1904; destroyed 1950), and Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill. (1906). In 1911 he began work on his own house, Taliesin, near Spring Green, Wis. The lavish Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1915–22, dismantled 1967) was significant for its revolutionary floating cantilever construction, which made it one of the only large buildings to withstand the earthquake of 1923. In the 1930s he designed his low-cost Usonian houses, but his most admired house, Fallingwater, in Bear Run, Pa. (1936), is an extravagant country retreat cantilevered over a waterfall. His Johnson Wax Building (1936–39), an example of humane workplace design, touched off an avalanche of major commissions. Of particular note is the Guggenheim Museum (1956–59), which has no separate floor levels but instead uses a spiral ramp, realizing Wright's ideal of a continuous space. Throughout his career he retained the use of ornamental detail, earthy colours, and rich textural effects. His sensitive use of materials helped to control and perfect his dynamic expression of space, which opened a new era in American architecture. Often considered the greatest U.S. architect of all time, his greatest legacy is “organic architecture,” or the idea that buildings harmonize both with their inhabitants and with their environment.

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(born Nov. 24, 1925, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 27, 2008, Stamford, Conn.) U.S. writer and editor. He attended Yale University, where he was chairman of the Yale Daily News. In 1955 he founded the National Review; as editor in chief, he used the journal as a forum for his conservative views. His column “On the Right” was syndicated in 1962 and eventually appeared in more than 200 newspapers. From 1966 to 1999 he hosted Firing Line, a weekly television interview program in which he often employed his wit and debating skills against ideological opponents. His books include God and Man at Yale (1951), Rumbles Left and Right (1963), and a series of spy novels.

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(born Dec. 17, 1908, Grand Valley, Colo., U.S.—died Sept. 8, 1980, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. chemist. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley and later taught there and at the University of Chicago and UCLA. With the Manhattan Project, he helped develop a method for separating uranium isotopes and showed that tritium is a product of cosmic radiation. In 1947 he and his students developed carbon-14 dating, which proved to be an extremely valuable tool for archaeology, anthropology, and earth science and earned him a 1960 Nobel Prize.

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(born June 1, 1907, Coventry, Warwickshire, Eng.—died Aug. 8, 1996, Columbia, Md., U.S.) British aviation engineer and pilot who invented the jet engine. He obtained his first patent for a turbojet engine in 1930, and in 1936 he cofounded Power Jets Ltd. The outbreak of World War II spurred the British government to support Whittle's work, and the first jet-powered aircraft took off in 1941. He was knighted in 1948 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1986.

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orig. Benjamin Franklin Wedekind

(born July 24, 1864, Hannover, Hanover—died March 9, 1918, Munich, Ger.) German actor and playwright. He lived in Switzerland (1872–84) and then in Munich, where he worked at various jobs, including journalist and cabaret performer. He wrote plays from 1891, when his tragedy The Awakening of Spring created a scandal with its theme of awakening adolescent sexuality. In his “Lulu” cycle, Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora's Box (1904), he extended the theme of sex to the underworld of society and introduced the amoral Lulu. His plays used episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature, prefiguring the Theatre of the Absurd and forming a transition from realism to Expressionism.

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(born May 12, 1936, Malden, Mass., U.S.) U.S. painter. He moved to New York City after studying history at Princeton University and there began his innovative “black paintings” (1958–60), incorporating symmetrical series of thin white stripes that replicated the canvas shape when seen against their black backgrounds. As a leading figure of Minimalism, in the mid 1960s he began using polychromy in an influential series marked by intersecting geometric curvilinear shapes and plays of vivid and harmonious colours. In the 1970s he began producing sensuously coloured, mixed-media reliefs featuring more organic shapes. He was given retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 and 1987.

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Musial

(born Nov. 21, 1920, Donora, Pa., U.S.) U.S. baseball player. Musial played his entire career for the St. Louis Cardinals (1941–63), starting as a pitcher but switching to the outfield and ultimately to first base. A left-handed batter, “Stan the Man” became one of the game's great hitters. His lifetime totals of hits (3,630), runs (1,949), and times at bat were second only to those of Ty Cobb, his total of runs batted in (1,951) was the fourth-highest of all time, and his total of extra-base hits (1,477) was only surpassed later by Hank Aaron. Popular among fans for his unfailing graciousness, he became a Cardinals executive after retirement.

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(born June 1, 1907, Coventry, Warwickshire, Eng.—died Aug. 8, 1996, Columbia, Md., U.S.) British aviation engineer and pilot who invented the jet engine. He obtained his first patent for a turbojet engine in 1930, and in 1936 he cofounded Power Jets Ltd. The outbreak of World War II spurred the British government to support Whittle's work, and the first jet-powered aircraft took off in 1941. He was knighted in 1948 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1986.

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(born Sept. 3, 1899, Traralgon, Vic., Austl.—died Aug. 31, 1985, Melbourne, Vic.) Australian physician and virologist. Burnet received his medical degree from the University of Melbourne. He later discovered a method for identifying bacteria by the viruses (bacteriophages) that attack them, and he shared a 1960 Nobel Prize with Peter Medawar for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance to tissue transplants. He was knighted in 1951.

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orig. Francis Albert Sinatra

(born Dec. 12, 1915, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died May 14, 1998, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. singer and actor. Sinatra began his singing career in the mid-1930s and was “discovered” by trumpeter Harry James, who immediately recruited him. Sinatra achieved sweeping national popularity in 1940–42 while singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. He sang on the radio program Your Hit Parade (1943–45), while becoming a favourite performer in theatres and nightclubs. In the 1940s he co-starred in a number of musical films with dancer Gene Kelly. His popularity suddenly declined about 1948, but his performance in From Here to Eternity (1953, Academy Award) revived his flagging career, and he later starred in many acclaimed films, including musicals such as Guys and Dolls (1955) and dramas such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962). After 1953 he performed and recorded using arrangements by Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins, reaching his peak in albums such as Only the Lonely (1958). In 1961 he founded Reprise Records. His masterly performances, alternately swinging and affectingly melancholic, brought him a success unparalleled in the history of American popular music.

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(born Aug. 31, 1935, Beaumont, Tex., U.S.) U.S. baseball player and the first black manager in major league baseball. Robinson played principally for the Cincinnati Reds (1956–65) and Baltimore Orioles (1966–71). In 1966 he won the triple crown, leading the league in home runs (49), runs batted in (122), and batting average (.316). He later managed the Cleveland Indians (1975–77), San Francisco Giants (1981–84), Baltimore Orioles (1988–91), and Montreal Expos (2002–06; the franchise moved to Washington, D.C., in 2005 and was renamed the Nationals).

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(born Nov. 9, 1924, Zürich, Switz.) Swiss-born U.S. photographer. In the 1940s he worked as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in Paris. He abandoned fashion work in 1947 to travel in the U.S. and South America and explore the use of the 35-mm camera. His collection The Americans (1959), with its gritty, discordant images of 1950s America, had enormous influence and established him as a major figure. After 1959 Frank turned to filmmaking; his short film Pull My Daisy (1959), a collaboration with Jack Kerouac, became an underground classic. A major later collection is Robert Frank: Moving Out (1994).

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orig. Michael O'Donovan

(born 1903, Cork, County Cork, Ire.—died March 10, 1966, Dublin) Irish writer. Brought up in poverty, O'Connor became a librarian and a director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre. He won popularity in the U.S. for short stories in which apparently trivial incidents illuminate Irish life. They appeared in volumes including Guests of the Nation (1931) and Crab Apple Jelly (1944) and in The New Yorker magazine. He also wrote critical studies on Irish life and literature and translations of Gaelic works of the 9th–20th centuries, including the great 17th-century satire The Midnight Court (1945).

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(born March 5, 1870, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Oct. 25, 1902, San Francisco, Calif.) U.S. novelist and short-story writer. Norris initially worked as an overseas correspondent and in publishing. He became the first important American author to embrace naturalism. McTeague (1899) is a portrait of an acquisitive society. He adopted a more humanitarian ideal beginning with his masterpiece, The Octopus (1901), the first novel of a projected trilogy dealing with the economic and social forces involved in the wheat industry. The second part, The Pit, appeared in 1903, but the third was unwritten at his death. Despite romanticizing tendencies, his works present a vivid, authentic picture of life in California in his day.

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Musial

(born Nov. 21, 1920, Donora, Pa., U.S.) U.S. baseball player. Musial played his entire career for the St. Louis Cardinals (1941–63), starting as a pitcher but switching to the outfield and ultimately to first base. A left-handed batter, “Stan the Man” became one of the game's great hitters. His lifetime totals of hits (3,630), runs (1,949), and times at bat were second only to those of Ty Cobb, his total of runs batted in (1,951) was the fourth-highest of all time, and his total of extra-base hits (1,477) was only surpassed later by Hank Aaron. Popular among fans for his unfailing graciousness, he became a Cardinals executive after retirement.

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orig. William Francis Murphy

Frank Murphy

(born April 13, 1890, Harbor Beach, Mich., U.S.—died July 19, 1949, Detroit, Mich.) U.S. Supreme Court justice (1940–49). After serving in World War I, he held several elective posts, including mayor of Detroit (1930–33). He was governor-general (1933–35) and U.S. high commissioner (1935–36) of the Philippines. Elected governor of Michigan (1937–38), he refused to use troops to break sit-down strikes by automobile workers. As U.S. attorney general (1939–40), he established the Justice Department's civil rights unit. Appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, he strongly defended civil rights and dissented in a case upholding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

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(born Aug. 21, 1854, Mercer, Maine, U.S.—died Dec. 22, 1925, New York City, N.Y.) U.S. newspaper and magazine publisher. He managed a telegraph office before moving to New York City, where he founded Golden Argosy (1882), later renamed Argosy Magazine; and Munsey's Magazine (1889), the first inexpensive, general-circulation, illustrated magazine in the U.S. He acquired several newspapers in Baltimore and New York, some of which disappeared in profitable mergers. He viewed his publications purely as moneymaking enterprises and maintained colourless editorial policies. He left most of his large fortune to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

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(born May 15, 1856, Chittenango, N.Y., U.S.—died May 6, 1919, Hollywood, Calif.) U.S. writer of children's books. Baum achieved commercial success with his first book, Father Goose (1899), and followed it the next year with the even more popular Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote 13 more Oz books, which acquired a huge readership. The series was continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson after his death.

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(born June 29, 1910, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died July 28, 1969, New York City) U.S. composer, librettist, and lyricist. The son of a piano teacher, in 1936 he moved to Hollywood, where he worked with Burton Lane, Jule Styne, Jimmy McHugh, and Hoagy Carmichael. His wartime songs include “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” and “What Do You Do in the Infantry?”; postwar hits include “On a Slow Boat to China” and “Baby It's Cold Outside” (Academy Award, 1949). His first Broadway musical was Where's Charley? (1948; film, 1952). In 1950 he produced Guys and Dolls (film, 1955), one of the greatest American musicals. It was followed by The Most Happy Fella (1956) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1962, Pulitzer Prize). His work for film includes the score for Hans Christian Andersen (1952).

Learn more about Loesser, Frank (Henry) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Dec. 17, 1908, Grand Valley, Colo., U.S.—died Sept. 8, 1980, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. chemist. He studied at the University of California at Berkeley and later taught there and at the University of Chicago and UCLA. With the Manhattan Project, he helped develop a method for separating uranium isotopes and showed that tritium is a product of cosmic radiation. In 1947 he and his students developed carbon-14 dating, which proved to be an extremely valuable tool for archaeology, anthropology, and earth science and earned him a 1960 Nobel Prize.

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(born May 15, 1856, Chittenango, N.Y., U.S.—died May 6, 1919, Hollywood, Calif.) U.S. writer of children's books. Baum achieved commercial success with his first book, Father Goose (1899), and followed it the next year with the even more popular Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote 13 more Oz books, which acquired a huge readership. The series was continued by Ruth Plumly Thompson after his death.

Learn more about Baum, L(yman) Frank with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Nov. 7, 1885, White Oak township, McLean county, Ill., U.S.—died April 15, 1972, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. economist. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1916. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1927 to 1952; Milton Friedman was one of the many students he influenced. His book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921) distinguished between insurable and uninsurable risks and asserted that profit was the reward entrepreneurs earned for bearing uninsurable risk. His monograph “Economic Organization” is a classic exposition of microeconomic theory. He is considered the founder of the Chicago school of economics.

Learn more about Knight, Frank H(yneman) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Dec. 22, 1856, Potsdam, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 21, 1937, St. Paul, Minn.) U.S. lawyer and diplomat. He represented the U.S. government in antitrust cases before serving in the U.S. Senate (1917–23) and as U.S. ambassador to Britain (1923–25). Appointed U.S. secretary of state (1925–29) by Pres. Calvin Coolidge, he negotiated the multinational Kellogg-Briand Pact, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1929. He later served on the Permanent Court of International Justice (1930–35).

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orig. Jacob Leibowicz

(born 1726, Berezanka or Korolowka, Galicia, Pol.—died Dec. 10, 1791, Offenbach, Hessen) Jewish false messiah. He was an uneducated visionary who claimed to be the reincarnation of Shabbetai Tzevi. He proclaimed himself messiah in 1751 and founded the Frankist, or Zoharist, sect, based on the Sefer ha-zohar, which he sought to put in the place of the Torah. The sect rejected traditional Judaism, and their practices, including orgiastic rites, led the Jewish community to excommunicate them in 1756. Protected by Roman Catholic authorities, who hoped Frank would help in the conversion of the Jews, Frank and his followers were baptized in Poland. In 1760 he was imprisoned by the Inquisition, who had realized that Frank's followers regarded Frank, not Jesus, as the messiah. Freed in 1773 by invading Russians, he settled in Germany and lived as a baron until his death.

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(born Feb. 28, 1929, Toronto, Ont., Can.) Canadian-born U.S architect. He studied at the University of Southern California and Harvard University. In his early buildings, his use of inexpensive materials (chain-link fencing, plywood, corrugated steel) gave many of his projects an unfinished, whimsical air. His structures are often characterized by unconventional or distorted shapes that have a sculptural, fragmented, or collagelike quality. In designing public buildings, he tends to cluster small units within a larger space rather than creating monolithic structures, thus emphasizing human scale. Of particular note is his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1991–97) in Spain, a shimmering pile of sharply twisting, curving shapes surfaced in titanium. Gehry won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989.

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(born Nov. 9, 1924, Zürich, Switz.) Swiss-born U.S. photographer. In the 1940s he worked as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in Paris. He abandoned fashion work in 1947 to travel in the U.S. and South America and explore the use of the 35-mm camera. His collection The Americans (1959), with its gritty, discordant images of 1950s America, had enormous influence and established him as a major figure. After 1959 Frank turned to filmmaking; his short film Pull My Daisy (1959), a collaboration with Jack Kerouac, became an underground classic. A major later collection is Robert Frank: Moving Out (1994).

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orig. Jacob Leibowicz

(born 1726, Berezanka or Korolowka, Galicia, Pol.—died Dec. 10, 1791, Offenbach, Hessen) Jewish false messiah. He was an uneducated visionary who claimed to be the reincarnation of Shabbetai Tzevi. He proclaimed himself messiah in 1751 and founded the Frankist, or Zoharist, sect, based on the Sefer ha-zohar, which he sought to put in the place of the Torah. The sect rejected traditional Judaism, and their practices, including orgiastic rites, led the Jewish community to excommunicate them in 1756. Protected by Roman Catholic authorities, who hoped Frank would help in the conversion of the Jews, Frank and his followers were baptized in Poland. In 1760 he was imprisoned by the Inquisition, who had realized that Frank's followers regarded Frank, not Jesus, as the messiah. Freed in 1773 by invading Russians, he settled in Germany and lived as a baron until his death.

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(born June 12, 1929, Frankfurt am Main, Ger.—died March 1945, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Hannover) German diarist. Frank was a young Jewish girl who kept a record of the two years her family spent in hiding in Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution. After their discovery by the Gestapo in 1944, the family was transported to concentration camps; Anne died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. Friends searching the hiding place found her diary, which her father published as The Diary of a Young Girl (1947). Precocious in style and insight, it traces her emotional growth amid adversity and is a classic of war literature.

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orig. Benjamin Franklin Wedekind

(born July 24, 1864, Hannover, Hanover—died March 9, 1918, Munich, Ger.) German actor and playwright. He lived in Switzerland (1872–84) and then in Munich, where he worked at various jobs, including journalist and cabaret performer. He wrote plays from 1891, when his tragedy The Awakening of Spring created a scandal with its theme of awakening adolescent sexuality. In his “Lulu” cycle, Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora's Box (1904), he extended the theme of sex to the underworld of society and introduced the amoral Lulu. His plays used episodic scenes, fragmented dialogue, distortion, and caricature, prefiguring the Theatre of the Absurd and forming a transition from realism to Expressionism.

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orig. Francis Albert Sinatra

(born Dec. 12, 1915, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died May 14, 1998, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. singer and actor. Sinatra began his singing career in the mid-1930s and was “discovered” by trumpeter Harry James, who immediately recruited him. Sinatra achieved sweeping national popularity in 1940–42 while singing with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. He sang on the radio program Your Hit Parade (1943–45), while becoming a favourite performer in theatres and nightclubs. In the 1940s he co-starred in a number of musical films with dancer Gene Kelly. His popularity suddenly declined about 1948, but his performance in From Here to Eternity (1953, Academy Award) revived his flagging career, and he later starred in many acclaimed films, including musicals such as Guys and Dolls (1955) and dramas such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962). After 1953 he performed and recorded using arrangements by Nelson Riddle, Billy May, and Gordon Jenkins, reaching his peak in albums such as Only the Lonely (1958). In 1961 he founded Reprise Records. His masterly performances, alternately swinging and affectingly melancholic, brought him a success unparalleled in the history of American popular music.

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(born Aug. 31, 1935, Beaumont, Tex., U.S.) U.S. baseball player and the first black manager in major league baseball. Robinson played principally for the Cincinnati Reds (1956–65) and Baltimore Orioles (1966–71). In 1966 he won the triple crown, leading the league in home runs (49), runs batted in (122), and batting average (.316). He later managed the Cleveland Indians (1975–77), San Francisco Giants (1981–84), Baltimore Orioles (1988–91), and Montreal Expos (2002–06; the franchise moved to Washington, D.C., in 2005 and was renamed the Nationals).

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(born July 14, 1895, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.—died April 14, 1978, Cambridge) British literary critic. He attended and later taught at Cambridge University. He brought a new seriousness to criticism, believing that the critic's duty is to assess works according to the author's moral position. He cofounded Scrutiny, a journal (published 1932–53) often regarded as his greatest contribution to English letters. His books include New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) and The Great Tradition (1948), in which he reassessed the English novel.

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(born May 12, 1936, Malden, Mass., U.S.) U.S. painter. He moved to New York City after studying history at Princeton University and there began his innovative “black paintings” (1958–60), incorporating symmetrical series of thin white stripes that replicated the canvas shape when seen against their black backgrounds. As a leading figure of Minimalism, in the mid 1960s he began using polychromy in an influential series marked by intersecting geometric curvilinear shapes and plays of vivid and harmonious colours. In the 1970s he began producing sensuously coloured, mixed-media reliefs featuring more organic shapes. He was given retrospective exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970 and 1987.

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(born Feb. 28, 1929, Toronto, Ont., Can.) Canadian-born U.S architect. He studied at the University of Southern California and Harvard University. In his early buildings, his use of inexpensive materials (chain-link fencing, plywood, corrugated steel) gave many of his projects an unfinished, whimsical air. His structures are often characterized by unconventional or distorted shapes that have a sculptural, fragmented, or collagelike quality. In designing public buildings, he tends to cluster small units within a larger space rather than creating monolithic structures, thus emphasizing human scale. Of particular note is his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (1991–97) in Spain, a shimmering pile of sharply twisting, curving shapes surfaced in titanium. Gehry won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989.

Learn more about Gehry, Frank O(wen) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

orig. Michael O'Donovan

(born 1903, Cork, County Cork, Ire.—died March 10, 1966, Dublin) Irish writer. Brought up in poverty, O'Connor became a librarian and a director of Dublin's Abbey Theatre. He won popularity in the U.S. for short stories in which apparently trivial incidents illuminate Irish life. They appeared in volumes including Guests of the Nation (1931) and Crab Apple Jelly (1944) and in The New Yorker magazine. He also wrote critical studies on Irish life and literature and translations of Gaelic works of the 9th–20th centuries, including the great 17th-century satire The Midnight Court (1945).

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orig. William Francis Murphy

Frank Murphy

(born April 13, 1890, Harbor Beach, Mich., U.S.—died July 19, 1949, Detroit, Mich.) U.S. Supreme Court justice (1940–49). After serving in World War I, he held several elective posts, including mayor of Detroit (1930–33). He was governor-general (1933–35) and U.S. high commissioner (1935–36) of the Philippines. Elected governor of Michigan (1937–38), he refused to use troops to break sit-down strikes by automobile workers. As U.S. attorney general (1939–40), he established the Justice Department's civil rights unit. Appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, he strongly defended civil rights and dissented in a case upholding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

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(born June 8, 1867, Richland Center, Wis., U.S.—died April 9, 1959, Phoenix, Ariz.) U.S. architect. After studying engineering briefly at the University of Wisconsin, he worked for the firm of Dankmar Adler (1844–1900) and Louis Sullivan in Chicago before opening his own practice there in 1893. Wright became the chief practitioner of the Prairie school, building about 50 Prairie houses from 1900 to 1910. Early nonresidential buildings include the forward-looking Larkin Building in Buffalo, N.Y. (1904; destroyed 1950), and Unity Temple in Oak Park, Ill. (1906). In 1911 he began work on his own house, Taliesin, near Spring Green, Wis. The lavish Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1915–22, dismantled 1967) was significant for its revolutionary floating cantilever construction, which made it one of the only large buildings to withstand the earthquake of 1923. In the 1930s he designed his low-cost Usonian houses, but his most admired house, Fallingwater, in Bear Run, Pa. (1936), is an extravagant country retreat cantilevered over a waterfall. His Johnson Wax Building (1936–39), an example of humane workplace design, touched off an avalanche of major commissions. Of particular note is the Guggenheim Museum (1956–59), which has no separate floor levels but instead uses a spiral ramp, realizing Wright's ideal of a continuous space. Throughout his career he retained the use of ornamental detail, earthy colours, and rich textural effects. His sensitive use of materials helped to control and perfect his dynamic expression of space, which opened a new era in American architecture. Often considered the greatest U.S. architect of all time, his greatest legacy is “organic architecture,” or the idea that buildings harmonize both with their inhabitants and with their environment.

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(born Nov. 7, 1885, White Oak township, McLean county, Ill., U.S.—died April 15, 1972, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. economist. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1916. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1927 to 1952; Milton Friedman was one of the many students he influenced. His book Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921) distinguished between insurable and uninsurable risks and asserted that profit was the reward entrepreneurs earned for bearing uninsurable risk. His monograph “Economic Organization” is a classic exposition of microeconomic theory. He is considered the founder of the Chicago school of economics.

Learn more about Knight, Frank H(yneman) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born June 29, 1910, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died July 28, 1969, New York City) U.S. composer, librettist, and lyricist. The son of a piano teacher, in 1936 he moved to Hollywood, where he worked with Burton Lane, Jule Styne, Jimmy McHugh, and Hoagy Carmichael. His wartime songs include “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” and “What Do You Do in the Infantry?”; postwar hits include “On a Slow Boat to China” and “Baby It's Cold Outside” (Academy Award, 1949). His first Broadway musical was Where's Charley? (1948; film, 1952). In 1950 he produced Guys and Dolls (film, 1955), one of the greatest American musicals. It was followed by The Most Happy Fella (1956) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1962, Pulitzer Prize). His work for film includes the score for Hans Christian Andersen (1952).

Learn more about Loesser, Frank (Henry) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born May 18, 1897, near Palermo, Sicily, Italy—died Sept. 3, 1991, La Quinta, Calif., U.S.) U.S. film director. At age six he immigrated with his family to the U.S. After holding various jobs in the film industry, he emerged as a major director with That Certain Thing (1928) and Platinum Blonde (1931). He won Academy Awards for It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), stories that portray naive idealists who triumph over more worldly types. He chose the same theme for his next film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) but departed from his usual style in Lost Horizon (1937) and Meet John Doe (1941). Capra also won a third Academy Award for You Can't Take It with You (1938). He made the documentary series Why We Fight during World War II and the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

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(born Dec. 22, 1856, Potsdam, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 21, 1937, St. Paul, Minn.) U.S. lawyer and diplomat. He represented the U.S. government in antitrust cases before serving in the U.S. Senate (1917–23) and as U.S. ambassador to Britain (1923–25). Appointed U.S. secretary of state (1925–29) by Pres. Calvin Coolidge, he negotiated the multinational Kellogg-Briand Pact, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1929. He later served on the Permanent Court of International Justice (1930–35).

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(born Aug. 21, 1854, Mercer, Maine, U.S.—died Dec. 22, 1925, New York City, N.Y.) U.S. newspaper and magazine publisher. He managed a telegraph office before moving to New York City, where he founded Golden Argosy (1882), later renamed Argosy Magazine; and Munsey's Magazine (1889), the first inexpensive, general-circulation, illustrated magazine in the U.S. He acquired several newspapers in Baltimore and New York, some of which disappeared in profitable mergers. He viewed his publications purely as moneymaking enterprises and maintained colourless editorial policies. He left most of his large fortune to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

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(born May 18, 1897, near Palermo, Sicily, Italy—died Sept. 3, 1991, La Quinta, Calif., U.S.) U.S. film director. At age six he immigrated with his family to the U.S. After holding various jobs in the film industry, he emerged as a major director with That Certain Thing (1928) and Platinum Blonde (1931). He won Academy Awards for It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), stories that portray naive idealists who triumph over more worldly types. He chose the same theme for his next film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) but departed from his usual style in Lost Horizon (1937) and Meet John Doe (1941). Capra also won a third Academy Award for You Can't Take It with You (1938). He made the documentary series Why We Fight during World War II and the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

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(born Sept. 3, 1899, Traralgon, Vic., Austl.—died Aug. 31, 1985, Melbourne, Vic.) Australian physician and virologist. Burnet received his medical degree from the University of Melbourne. He later discovered a method for identifying bacteria by the viruses (bacteriophages) that attack them, and he shared a 1960 Nobel Prize with Peter Medawar for the discovery of acquired immunological tolerance to tissue transplants. He was knighted in 1951.

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(born Nov. 24, 1925, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Feb. 27, 2008, Stamford, Conn.) U.S. writer and editor. He attended Yale University, where he was chairman of the Yale Daily News. In 1955 he founded the National Review; as editor in chief, he used the journal as a forum for his conservative views. His column “On the Right” was syndicated in 1962 and eventually appeared in more than 200 newspapers. From 1966 to 1999 he hosted Firing Line, a weekly television interview program in which he often employed his wit and debating skills against ideological opponents. His books include God and Man at Yale (1951), Rumbles Left and Right (1963), and a series of spy novels.

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(born June 12, 1929, Frankfurt am Main, Ger.—died March 1945, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Hannover) German diarist. Frank was a young Jewish girl who kept a record of the two years her family spent in hiding in Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution. After their discovery by the Gestapo in 1944, the family was transported to concentration camps; Anne died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen. Friends searching the hiding place found her diary, which her father published as The Diary of a Young Girl (1947). Precocious in style and insight, it traces her emotional growth amid adversity and is a classic of war literature.

Learn more about Frank, Anne(lies Marie) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

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