Jarry, Alfred, 1873-1907, French author. He was well known in Paris for his eccentric and dissolute behavior and for his insistence on the superiority of hallucinations over rational intelligence. His most famous work is the satirical farce Ubu Roi [Ubu the king] (1896, tr. 1961), with a repulsive and cowardly hero based on one of his old schoolteachers. He also wrote surrealistic verse stories, which, although witty, are also blasphemous and scatological. They include Les Minutes de sable mémorial [the moments of a monument in sand] (1894), César-Antéchrist [Caesar-Antichrist] (1895, tr. 1972), L'Amour en visites [love on visits] (1898), L'Amour absolu [absolute love] (1899), and Le Surmale (1902), as well as another play, Ubu enchaǐné [Ubu in chains] (1902).

Döblin, Alfred, 1878-1957, German novelist and physician. His experiences as a psychiatrist in the workers' district of Berlin served as the basis for his experimental novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929, tr. 1931), in which he applied the techniques of James Joyce's Ulysses to his story of the life of a Berlin worker. Other novels include Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lun [the three leaps of Wang-lun] (1915) and Pardon wird nicht gegeben (1935, tr. Men without Mercy, 1937). Döblin left Germany in 1933, lived in France and the United States, and returned to Germany after World War II.

Windischgrätz or Windisch-Grätz, Alfred, Fürst zu, 1787-1862, Austrian field marshal. He was military governor of Bohemia when the revolutions of 1848 broke out in the Hapsburg empire. Given command in Vienna, he crushed the insurrection there, but because of the pressure of public opinion he was sent back to Bohemia. Meanwhile Prague had fallen to the revolutionists, and Windischgrätz's wife and eldest son had been killed in the insurrection. Windischgrätz recaptured (June, 1848) Prague after bombarding it and set up a military dictatorship over Bohemia. Vienna, where the revolutionists had again taken over, was also bombarded into submission (Oct., 1848) by Windischgrätz. With Felix zu Schwarzenberg, he engineered the abdication (Dec. 2, 1848) of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand in favor of Francis Joseph. Windischgrätz was removed from command in 1849 when his campaign against the Hungarian revolutionists was checked at Godollo. He later held various government posts.

Newton, Alfred, 1829-1907, English zoologist, b. Geneva. He studied (1854-65) ornithology in Lapland, Iceland, the West Indies, and North America and in 1866 became the first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at Cambridge. In 1900 he received the Royal Medal of the Royal Society and the Gold Medal of the Linnaean Society. His writings include Zoology of Ancient Europe (1862) and Dictionary of Birds (1893-96). Newton edited (1865-70) the review Ibis.

Pleasonton, Alfred, 1824-97, Union general in the American Civil War, b. Washington, D.C. He served in the Mexican War and in the Indian wars on the frontier. In the Civil War, he distinguished himself in the Peninsular campaign (1862) and was made brigadier general of volunteers. He fought at Antietam and Fredericksburg, and his stand against Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville averted a total Union defeat. He commanded the Union cavalry at Brandy Station and in the ensuing Gettysburg campaign, as well as later engagements. Transferred to Missouri, Pleasonton defeated Gen. Sterling Price at Westport and Marais des Cygnes (1864), ending the last Confederate threat in the West.

Ollivant, Alfred, 1874-1927, English novelist. He wrote the classic dog story Bob, Son of Battle (1898), published in England as Owd Bob. Other works include The Gentleman (1908), The Royal Road (1912), Boy Woodburn (1917), and Tomorrow (1927).

Eisenstaedt, Alfred, 1898-1995, American photographer, b. Dirschau, Germany (now Tczew, Poland). Widely considered the father of photojournalism, he began creating photo essays in Berlin during the 1920s and early 1930s. He emigrated to the United States in 1935 and joined (1936) the original photography staff at Life magazine. Soon Eisenstaedt came to epitomize the magazine's style with his topically important and beautifully composed 35mm photographs and his candid portraits of the great and the anonymous. Working for Life until its 1972 demise as a weekly, Eisenstaedt traveled throughout the world, becoming internationally known for his photographic series (e.g., Japan (1945-46)); he continued working into the 1990s. Probably his most famous photograph is of the joyous Times Square kiss of a sailor and a nurse on V-J day. His many books include Witness to Our Time (1966), Photojournalism (1971), and Germany (1981).

Hettner, Alfred, 1859-1942, German geographer and teacher; a founder of modern German geography. His methodology and his materialistic philosophy, grounded in the work of Immanuel Kant, have had a great influence on Russian and Soviet geographers. He founded (1895) the journal Geographisches Zeitschrift and published Die Geographie: ihre Geschichte, ihre Wesen und ihre Methoden (1927).

Gusenbauer, Alfred, 1960-, Austrian politician, grad. Univ. of Vienna (Ph.D. 1987). Active in the Social Democratic party from a young age, he was executive secretary (1981-1990) for Youth of the Social Democratic party and Austrian chairman (1984-90) of the Socialist Youth before first winning election to the Austrian parliament in 1991. In 2000 he became party leader of the Social Democrats, and led them in 2006 to win a plurality of seats in parliament. Forming a "grand coalition" with the conservative People's party out of necessity, Gusenbauer served chancellor of Austria (2007-8).

Alfred, 849-99, king of Wessex (871-99), sometimes called Alfred the Great, b. Wantage, Berkshire.

Early Life

The youngest son of King Æthelwulf, he was sent in 853 to Rome, where the pope gave him the title of Roman consul. He returned to Rome with his father in 855. His adolescence was marked by ill health and deep religious devotion, both of which persisted for the rest of his life.

Little is known of him during the reigns of his older brothers Æthelbald and Æthelbert, but when Æthelred took the throne (865), Alfred became his secundarius (viceroy) and aided his brother in subsequent battles against the Danes, who then threatened to overrun all England. When the Danes began their assault on Wessex in 870, Æthelred and Alfred resisted with varying results: they won a victory at Ashdown, Berkshire; they were defeated at Basing; and they had several indecisive engagements.

Reign

Early Wars with the Danes

Upon Æthelred's death after Easter in 871, Alfred became king of the West Saxons and overlord of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex. Faced by an enemy too powerful to defeat decisively, Alfred cleared the Danes from Wessex by a heavy payment of tribute (see Danegeld) in 871. Alfred used the five-year respite that followed to begin building up a fleet. In 876 and 877 the Danes returned to ravage for several months and finally, halted by Alfred's army, swore to leave Wessex forever. However, in a surprise invasion early in 878 they crushed Alfred's forces, and he fled to Athelney in the fens of Somerset, where he organized a series of harassing raids on the enemy. The famous legend in which, unrecognized, he is scolded by a peasant woman for letting her cakes burn probably derives from this period of his life.

In May, 878, Alfred rallied his army and won a complete victory over the Danes at Edington. He then dictated the Peace of Chippenham (or Wedmore) by which Guthrum, the Danish leader, accepted Christian baptism and probably agreed to separate England into English and Danish spheres of influence. The Danes moved into East Anglia and E Mercia, and Alfred established his overlordship in W Mercia. Alfred captured (886) London and concluded another treaty with Guthrum that marked off the Danelaw E and N of the Thames, Lea, and Ouse rivers, and Watling Street, leaving the south and west of England to Alfred.

Reforms and Achievements

Security gave Alfred the chance to institute numerous reforms within his kingdom. Against further probable attacks by the Danes, he reorganized the militia, or fyrd, around numerous garrisoned forts throughout Wessex. Drawing from the old codes of Æthelbert of Kent, Ine of Wessex, and Offa of Mercia, he issued his own code of laws, which contained measures for a stronger centralized monarchy. He reformed the administration of justice and energetically participated in it, and he reorganized the finances of his court. He came eventually to be considered the overlord of all England, although this title was not realized in concrete political administration.

Alfred's greatest achievements, however, were the revival of learning and the establishment of Old English literary prose. He gathered together a group of eminent scholars, including the Welshman Asser. They strengthened the church by reviving learning among the clergy and organized a court school like that of Charlemagne, in which not only youths and clerics but also mature nobles were taught.

Alfred himself between 887 and 892 learned Latin and translated several Latin works into English—Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care, Orosius's universal history, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and St. Augustine's Soliloquies. A translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History is also commonly ascribed to him, but there is some doubt since it differs markedly in style from the others. Alfred liberally interpolated his own thoughts into his writings, and the Orosius is particularly interesting for the addition of accounts of voyages made by the Norse explorers Ohthere and Wulfstan. Although he probably was not directly responsible for the compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, his patronage of learning undoubtedly encouraged it.

Renewed Danish Invasions

All these pursuits were interrupted, but not ended, by new Danish invasions between 892 and 896. The struggle was severe because Alfred's military reforms had not been completed and because the invading forces were joined by settlers from the Danelaw. He received strong support from his son Edward the Elder, his daughter Æthelflæd, and her husband, Æthelred of Mercia, and in the critical year of 893 the great Danish fort at Benfleet was successfully stormed. The one Danish attempt to penetrate deeply into Wessex was halted by Edward the Elder. In 896 the Danes slowly dispersed to the Danelaw or overseas, and Alfred's new long ships fought with varying success against pirate raids on the south coast. Alfred's career was later embroidered by many heroic legends, but history alone justifies calling him Alfred the Great.

Adler, Alfred, 1870-1937, Austrian psychologist, founder of the school of individual psychology. Although one of Sigmund Freud's earlier associates, he rejected the Freudian emphasis upon sex as the root of neurosis. Adler broke with Freud in 1911, maintaining that feelings of helplessness during childhood can lead to an inferiority complex. Adler's theory focused on social forces, and his therapy, while still concerned with the analysis of early childhood, was also interested in overcoming the inferiority complex through positive social interaction. After 1932, he lectured and practiced in the United States. His books include The Practice and Theory of Individual Psychology (1927, repr. 1973) and Understanding Human Nature (1927, repr. 1978).

Pellan, Alfred, 1906-88, Canadian painter, b. Quebec. Pellan sold his painting Corner of Old Quebec to the National Gallery, Ottawa, when he was 16. He lived in Paris from 1926 until 1940, when he returned to Canada. Influenced by cubism and surrealism, Pellan became in turn a guiding force for younger Canadian artists when his work was exhibited in Montreal in 1940. He painted murals for many art galleries (e.g., Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1968) and public buildings, and his work was frequently exhibited internationally.

Sisley, Alfred, 1839-99, French impressionist landscape painter, b. Paris, of English parents. He studied under Corot, Gleyre, and Courbet and was (1873) a founding member of the Impressionist group. After 1871, Sisley lived modestly at Moret-sur-Loing and painted subtly shimmering small-town landscapes that reveal a wistful, lyrical sensibility. Influenced by his friends Renoir and Monet in his selection of colors, Sisley was less daring than Monet in his use of the "rainbow palette" and closer to the Barbizon School tradition. He is well represented in many museums, e.g., the Art Institute of Chicago, which owns Street in Moret and Sand Heaps.

Noyes, Alfred, 1880-1958, English poet, best known for his poems "The Highwayman" and "The Barrel-Organ." His first volume of verse, Loom of Years, appeared in 1902. It was followed by such poems as the epic Drake (1908) and the colorful Tales of the Mermaid Tavern (1913). From 1914 to 1923, Noyes was professor of English literature at Princeton. In 1925, Noyes converted to Roman Catholicism; The Unknown God (1934) is an account of his conversion. His later writings include The Torch Bearers (1922-30), a trilogy in verse on man's scientific accomplishments; The Sun Cure (1929), a novel; and a biography of Voltaire (1938). His collected poems were published in 1950. Noyes was a literary conservative who adhered to traditional models in the structure and substance of his poetry. His poems, highly colored and romantic, are often marred by sentimentality.

Tarski, Alfred, 1902-, Polish-American mathematician and philosopher, Ph.D. Univ. of Warsaw, 1924. He lectured at Warsaw until 1939, emigrated to the United States, and then taught at the Univ. of California, Berkeley (1942-68). Tarski made extensive, basic contributions to the field of metamathematics, a branch of mathematical logic. His most important contribution to logic is the semantic method, a method that allows a more exacting study of formal scientific languages. His work is characterized by a basic acceptance and free use of the assumptions of set theory. For this reason he is regarded by some as a nominalist. His publications include A Decision Method for Elementary Algebra and Geometry (1948, rev. ed. 1957) and Undecidable Theories (with others, 1953; repr. 1968).

Schlieffen, Alfred, Graf von, 1833-1913, German field marshal and strategist. In the tradition of the Prussian officer corps, Schlieffen was a professional soldier who considered political questions beyond his responsibility. As chief of the German general staff from 1891 through 1905 he developed the famous Schlieffen plan. According to the plan, Germany could solve the problem of war on two fronts by first defeating France in a lightning campaign and then throwing its full weight against Russia. The plan called for a flanking movement by an overwhelmingly strong right (i.e., northern) wing, which was to advance through Belgium and Holland and, in an enveloping move, compel the bulk of the French forces either to fight with their backs to the frontier fortresses or to flee into Switzerland. Much weaker contingents were to be used to hold back the French in the south and the Russians in the east. The plan (which disregarded Belgian and Dutch neutrality) demanded boldness for its execution. When World War I broke out in 1914 the Schlieffen plan was employed in a modified form, but a number of factors—including Russian military strength, German lack of mobility, effective French delaying action, and the reluctance of Schlieffen's successor, H. J. L. von Moltke, to weaken his eastern front—led to its failure. In World War II, unhampered by a Russian threat in the east and possessing highly mobile forces, the German command successfully employed (May-June, 1940) a variation of the Schlieffen plan to defeat France.

Schnittke, Alfred, 1924-98, Russian composer. He studied music in Vienna (1946-48) and at the Moscow Conservatory (1953-58), where he later (1962-72) taught instrumentation. Thereafter, he earned a living mainly by composing more than 60 film scores, which he wrote in a traditional style acceptible to Soviet authorities. However, his signature avant-garde pieces are far from traditional, incorporating a wide variety of styles, from classical harmonics to serial dissonances, and including quotations and references to other works—all frequently within the same composition. Schnittke was little known in the West until the 1980s, when his music was championed by a number of expatriate Russian performers. Extremely prolific, he wrote nine symphonies, six concerti grossi, four violin and two cello concerti, four string quartets, six ballet scores, and numerous orchestral, vocal, choral, chamber, and solo pieces. Among his better-known works are the Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977) and the operas composed late in his career: Life with an Idiot (1992), Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1993), and Gesualdo (1994).

Beit, Alfred, 1853-1906, South African financier, b. Hamburg. He went to South Africa in 1875, grew rich from the development of diamond mines, and was a colleague and lieutenant of Cecil Rhodes in Rhodesia. A philanthropist, he founded a chair for colonial history at the Univ. of Oxford and made many gifts for educational purposes in London, Hamburg, and South Africa.

Rosenberg, Alfred, 1893-1946, German Nazi leader. He was born in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia), and studied architecture in Riga, and later in Moscow. Returning to Reval, he became active as a political ideologist until he fled (1919) to Germany to escape arrest for counterrevolutionary speeches. There he joined the National Socialist party and became the editor of the party organ, Völkischer Beobachter. The author of an anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and neopagan book, Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts [the myth of the 20th cent.] (1930), he supplied Adolf Hitler with the spurious philosophical and scientific basis for his racist doctrine (see National Socialism). Rosenberg was made (1933) foreign affairs secretary of the party and distinguished himself as the foremost anti-Bolshevik among its leaders. In 1941 he was appointed minister for the occupied Eastern territories. Convicted as a war criminal at the Nuremberg trials, he was executed.

Austin, Alfred, 1835-1913, English author, b. Leeds. Originally trained for a legal career, he eventually turned to writing and politics. From 1883-95 he edited the National Review. Although in 1896 he succeeded Tennyson as poet laureate, his poetry is negligible, and he was the butt of many critics who attacked his snobbishness, tastelessness, and lack of poetic talent. His best work is A Garden That I Love (1894, 1907), a miscellany in diary form.

Lunt, Alfred, 1893-1977, b. Milwaukee, and Lynn Fontanne, 1887?-1983, b. Essex, England, American acting couple. Lunt made his debut in Boston (1913), toured in vaudeville, and won fame in Booth Tarkington's Clarence in 1919. Fontanne made her London debut in 1905 and her first appearance in New York City in 1910. The couple were married in 1922 and appeared together (1924-29) in many Theatre Guild productions, including The Guardsman and Pygmalion. The Lunts first appeared in London in Caprice in 1929. They excelled especially in sophisticated modern comedy, such as Noël Coward's Design for Living (1933), Robert Sherwood's Idiot's Delight (1936), and Terence Rattigan's Love in Idleness (1944-49). The Lunts also played in weightier dramas, including There Shall Be No Night (1940) and The Visit (1957-60), their last joint appearance, and performed together in films and television plays.

Rethel, Alfred, 1816-59, German historical painter and draftsman. He gained a reputation in Frankfurt, where he painted Daniel in the Lions' Den and Guardian Angel of Emperor Maximilian. His major work was half of a fresco cycle (1847-52) for the town hall of Aachen, depicting scenes from the life of Charlemagne. Rethel also made a series of remarkable drawings for wood engravings for Another Dance of Death (1849), in which he depicted events from the Revolution of 1848.

Hugenberg, Alfred, 1865-1951, German financier and politician. He was president of the directorate of the Krupp firm (1909-18), entered the Reichstag in 1919, and was chairman (1928-33) of the conservative German Nationalist party. Control of the Hugenberg combine, a media and finance conglomerate, enabled him to mount a powerful propaganda campaign against Communists, socialists, and the Versailles Treaty. He was a major financial backer of the Nazis, hoping to control them, and a member of Hitler's first cabinet (1933), but he resigned after six months. His party was dissolved, and his combine gradually absorbed by the Nazi state.

Deakin, Alfred, 1856-1919, Australian political leader. He held office in various ministries and aided in the fight for federation of the Australian states. He accomplished a great deal in social legislation, irrigation, defense, and preferential tariffs. At first attorney general of Australia (1901), he later was prime minister in three different fusion governments (1903-4, 1905-8, 1909-10).

Deller, Alfred, 1912-79, English countertenor. He began his career as a chorister in his parish church. From 1940-47 he was a lay clerk at Canterbury Cathedral, and in 1947 he was appointed to the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Deller's unusual voice was particularly suited to Renaissance music and to the music of Handel and Purcell. In 1948 he formed the Deller Consort, which presented authentic performances of medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music; the consort made numerous recordings and performed all over the world. Deller's son, Mark Deller, is also a countertenor, who often performed with his father.

Binet, Alfred, 1857-1911, French psychologist. From 1894 he was director of the psychology laboratory at the Sorbonne. He is known for his research and innovation in testing human intelligence. With Théodore Simon he devised (1905-11) a series of tests that, with revisions, came into wide use in schools, industries, and the army. The Stanford, the Herring, and the Kuhlmann are important revisions. Binet and Simon wrote Les Enfants anormaux (1907, tr. Mentally Defective Children, 1914). Most of his writings were published in Année psychologique, a journal that he founded in 1895.

Brendel, Alfred, 1931-, Austrian pianist, b. Moravia (now in the Czech Republic). He debuted publicly in 1948 and, after winning a prize at the Busoni competition in Bolzano, Italy, in 1949, embarked upon a distinguished career as a soloist, ultimately performing with most of the world's major orchestras and conductors before he retired in 2008. Brendel, who has lived in London since the early 1970s, is particularly known for his interpretations of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Brahms, and Liszt. He has been acclaimed for his profound understanding of musical architecture, for his combination of lyricism and rigor, and for the intellectual and emotional depth of his playing. He has published two collections (1976, 1990) of essays, which are combined with other writings in Alfred Brendel on Music (2001).

Stieglitz, Alfred, 1864-1946, American photographer, editor, and art exhibitor, b. Hoboken, N.J. The first art photographer in the United States, Stieglitz more than any other American compelled the recognition of photography as a fine art. In 1881 he went to Berlin to study engineering but soon devoted himself to photography. In 1890 he returned to the United States and for three years helped to direct the Heliochrome Engraving Company. He then edited a series of photography magazines, the American Amateur Photographer (1892-96), Camera Notes (1897-1902), and Camera Work (1902-17), the organ of the photo-secessionists, a group he led that was dedicated to the promotion of photography as a legitimate art form.

In 1905 he established the famous gallery "291" at 291 Fifth Ave., New York City, for the exhibition of photography as a fine art. Soon the gallery broadened its scope to include the works of the modern French art movement and introduced to the United States the work of Cézanne, Picasso, Braque, Brancusi, and many others. It also made known the work of such American artists as John Marin, Charles Demuth, Max Weber, and Georgia O'Keeffe whom Stieglitz married in 1924.

From 1917 to 1925 Stieglitz produced his major works: the extraordinary portraits of O'Keeffe, studies of New York, and the great cloud series through which he developed his concept of photographic "equivalents." This concept greatly influenced photographic aesthetics. He then opened the Intimate Gallery (1925-30) and An American Place (1930-46), which continued the work of "291." Through his own superb photographic work and his generous championship of others, he promoted the symbolic and spiritually significant in American art, as opposed to the merely technically proficient.

Duff Cooper, Alfred: see Cooper, Alfred Duff.

Werner, Alfred, 1866-1919, French-born Swiss chemist, Ph.D. Univ. of Zürich, 1890. Werner was a professor at the Univ. of Zürich from 1893 until his death in 1919. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1913 for his work on the linkage of atoms in molecules, which opened up new fields of research in inorganic chemistry. Werner is best known for applying principles of geometry to identifying the structure of molecular compounds, a field of study now known as coordination chemistry. His work has had applications not only in chemistry and biochemistry but also in related sciences including mineralogy and crystallography.

Kastler, Alfred, 1902-84, German-born French physicist, Ph.D. Univ. of Bordeaux, 1936. Kastler was a lecturer at Clermont-Ferrand Univ. (1936-38), professor at the Univ. of Bordeaux (1938-41), professor at the École Normale Supérieure (1941-68), and director of research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (1968-72). He received the 1966 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery and development of two methods—double resonance and optical pumping—for using light to manipulate and study the energy levels of electrons in atoms. Both of these techniques were improvements on earlier methods, allowing for more detailed studies of the structure of atoms.

Kazin, Alfred, 1915-98, American critic, b. New York City, grad. College of the City of New York (B.S., 1935) and Columbia (M.A., 1938). Kazin was one of the outstanding literary critics of his time. His first book, the influential and pioneering On Native Grounds (1942), is a critical study of American prose literature from Howells to Faulkner. His later essay collections include The Inmost Leaf (1955), Contemporaries (1962), Bright Book of Life (1973), An American Procession (1984), Writing Was Everything (1995), and God & the American Writer (1997).

Drake, Alfred, 1914-92, American singer, actor, and director, b. New York City, originally named Alfred Capurro. Drake first appeared on stage in 1935 in The Mikado. The Broadway production of Oklahoma! (1943) brought him stardom, followed by leading roles in Kiss Me Kate (1948) and Kismet (1953). In 1964 he played the king in John Gielgud's production of Hamlet, and in 1973 he appeared in the musical Gigi, both on Broadway.

Henschke, Alfred: see Klabund.

Marshall, Alfred, 1842-1924, English economist. At Cambridge, where he taught from 1885 to 1908, he exerted great influence on the development of economic thought of the time; one of his students was John Maynard Keynes. He systematized the classical economic theories and made new analyses in the same manner, thus laying the foundation of the neoclassical school of economics. He was concerned with theories of costs, value, and distribution and developed a concept of marginal utility. His Principles of Economics (1890) was for years the standard work and is still widely read. Among his other works are Industry and Trade (1919) and Money, Credit, and Commerce (1923).

Kreymborg, Alfred, 1883-1966, American poet and anthologist, b. New York City. Originally one of the imagists, he wrote poems collected in Mushrooms (1916), Manhattan Men (1929), Selected Poems (1945), and Man and Shadow (1946). He chronicled American poetry in such works as the critical history Our Singing Strength (1929, 1934) and the anthology Lyric America (1930). His puppet plays were also popular.

Mombert, Alfred, 1872-1942, German poet. He was briefly a lawyer and public official. His works, characterized by mysticism, fantasy, and simplicity of style, include Die Glühende [aglow] (1896), Die Schöpfung [the creation] (1897), Die Blüte des Chaos [the blossoming of chaos] (1905), the trilogy Aeon (1907-11), Der Held der Erde [the hero of the earth] (1919), and Atair (1925). A Jew, Mombert was arrested by the Nazis in 1940. He fell ill in a concentration camp, was released (1941), and died in Switzerland.

Waterhouse, Alfred, 1830-1905, English architect. He won competitions for the Manchester assize court (1859) and the Manchester city hall (1868). This work placed him in the forefront of the Victorian Gothic revival. His most important work, the Natural History Museum, South Kensington, in a modified Romanesque style, was notable for its revival of the use of terra-cotta. Waterhouse also executed important buildings for Balliol College, Oxford; Pembroke College, Cambridge; Prudential Assurance Company, Holborn, London; and the City and Guilds College, South Kensington (1881).

(born Aug. 9, 1911, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.—died March 14, 1995, Pasadena, Calif.) U.S. nuclear astrophysicist. He received his Ph.D. from Caltech and became a professor there in 1939. His theory of element generation (nucleosynthesis) suggests that, as stars evolve, chemical elements are synthesized progressively (light to heavy) by means of nuclear fusion that also produces light and heat and that the heaviest elements are synthesized in supernovas. For his theory he shared a 1983 Nobel Prize with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He is also known for his work in radio astronomy with Fred Hoyle.

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(born Feb. 15, 1861, Ramsgate, Isle of Thanet, Kent, Eng.—died Dec. 30, 1947, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.) British mathematician and philosopher. He taught principally at the University of Cambridge (1885–1911) and Harvard University (1924–37). His Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898) extended Boolean symbolic logic. He collaborated with Bertrand Russell on the epochal Principia Mathematica (1910–13), which attempted to establish the thesis of logicism. In Process and Reality (1929), his major work in metaphysics, he proposed that the universe consists entirely of becomings, each a process of appropriating and integrating the infinity of items provided by the antecedent universe and by God. His other works include “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World” (1905), An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919), The Concept of Nature (1920), Science and the Modern World (1925), and Religion in the Making (1926). He received the Order of Merit in 1945.

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(born Nov. 1, 1880, Berlin, Ger.—died Nov. 1930, Greenland) German meteorologist and geophysicist. After earning a Ph.D. in astronomy (1905), he became interested in paleoclimatology and traveled to Greenland to research polar air circulation. He formulated the first complete statement of the continental drift hypothesis, which he presented in The Origin of Continents and Oceans (1915). His theory won some adherents, but by 1930 most geologists had rejected it because of the implausibility of his postulations for the driving force behind the continents' movement. It was resurrected in the 1960s as part of the theory of plate tectonics. Wegener died during his fourth expedition to Greenland.

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(born Jan. 8, 1823, Usk, Monmouthshire, Wales—died Nov. 7, 1913, Broadstone, Dorset, Eng.) British naturalist. Though trained as a surveyor and architect, he became interested in botany and traveled to the Amazon in 1848 to collect specimens. In 1854–62 he toured the Malay Archipelago, augmenting his collection. His observations of the islands led to his developing a theory of the origin of species through natural selection independently of, and simultaneously with, Charles Darwin, though Darwin developed his own theory in much greater detail, provided far more evidence for it, and was mainly responsible for its acceptance. Unlike Darwin, Wallace insisted that the higher mental capacities of humans could not have arisen by natural selection but that some nonbiological agency must have been responsible. He hypothesized a boundary (Wallace's line) running between the islands of the Malay Archipelago, between the Oriental and Australasian faunal regions, many animals abundant on one side being absent on the other. In the realm of public policy he supported socialism, pacifism, land nationalization, and women's suffrage. His works include Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870), Geographical Distribution of Animals (2 vol., 1876), and Darwinism (1889).

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(born March 19, 1849, Küstrin, Prussia—died March 6, 1930, Ebenhausen, near Munich, Ger.) German naval commander. The son of a Prussian civil servant, he enlisted in the Prussian Navy in 1865, attended the Kiel Naval School, and was commissioned in 1869. As commander of a torpedo-boat flotilla, he devised new tactical principles. Promoted to rear admiral, he commanded a cruiser squadron in East Asia (1896–97). In 1897 he became secretary of state of the imperial navy department and reorganized the German navy into a formidable high-seas fleet. Promoted to grand admiral (1911), he favoured unlimited submarine warfare in World War I, but opposition to his policy led to his resignation in 1916. In 1917 he cofounded the patriotic Fatherland Party.

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(born Jan. 1, 1864, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died July 13, 1946, New York, N.Y.) U.S. photographer and exhibitor of modern art. He was taken to Europe by his wealthy family to further his education in 1881. In 1883 he abandoned engineering studies in Berlin for a photographic career. Returning to the U.S. in 1890, he made the first successful photographs in snow, in rain, and at night. In 1902 he founded the Photo-Secession group to establish photography as an art. His own best photographs are perhaps two series (1917–27), one of portraits of his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe, and the other of cloud shapes corresponding to emotional experiences. His photographs were the first to be exhibited in major U.S. museums. He also was the first to exhibit, at his “291” gallery in New York City, works of modern European and U.S. painters, five years before the Armory Show.

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(born Dec. 30, 1873, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Oct. 4, 1944, New York City) U.S. politician. After working in the Fulton fish market to help support his family, he began his political career with a job from Tammany Hall (1895). In the state assembly (1903–15), he rose to speaker, then served in city political posts. As governor of New York (1919–20, 1923–28) he worked for improved housing, child welfare, and efficient government. In 1928 he won the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, the first Roman Catholic to do so, but he was easily defeated by Herbert Hoover. He later opposed the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt and supported Republican presidential candidates for president in 1936 and 1940.

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(born May 23, 1875, New Haven, Conn., U.S.—died Feb. 17, 1966, New York, N.Y.) U.S. corporate executive. He began his career at the Hyatt Roller Bearing Co. in New Jersey and became its president at age 26. Hyatt was later acquired by General Motors Corp. (GM), and Sloan rose to become president and chief executive officer of GM in 1923. Under his leadership it surpassed Ford Motor Co. in sales and became the largest corporation in the world. He served as chairman of the board from 1937 to his retirement in 1956. A noted philanthropist, he endowed the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and contributed to the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and to the school of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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(born Oct. 30, 1839, Paris, Fr.—died Jan. 29, 1899, Moret-sur-Loing) British-French landscape painter. Born in Paris to English parents, he began painting as an amateur. His early style was much influenced by Camille Corot. He became associated with Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir and with them became one of the founders of Impressionism. His works, mostly landscapes, are distinguished from those of his colleagues by their softly harmonious values. His family was ruined by the Franco-Prussian War, and his life was a constant struggle against poverty. Not until after his death did his talent begin to be widely recognized.

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(born Oct. 29, 1910, London, Eng.—died June 27, 1989, London) British philosopher. He taught at University College London (1946–59) and later at Oxford (1959–78). He gained international notice in 1936 with the publication of his first book, Language, Truth and Logic, a manifesto of logical positivism that drew on the ideas of the Vienna Circle and the tradition of British empiricism as represented by David Hume and Bertrand Russell. He is also remembered for his contributions to epistemology and his writings on the history of Anglo-American philosophy (seealso analytic philosophy). His other works include The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge (1940), The Problem of Knowledge (1956), The Origins of Pragmatism (1968), Russell and Moore (1971), The Central Questions of Philosophy (1973), and Wittgenstein (1985).

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(born Aug. 13, 1899, London, Eng.—died April 29, 1980, Bel Air, Calif., U.S.) British-born film director. He worked in the London office of a U.S. film company from 1920 and was promoted to director in 1925. His film The Lodger (1926) concerned an ordinary person caught in extraordinary events, a theme that was to recur in many of his films. Fascinated with voyeurism and crime, he proved himself a master of suspense with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934; remade 1956), The 39 Steps (1935), and The Lady Vanishes (1938). His first U.S. film, Rebecca (1940), was a tense psychological drama. His virtuosity was evident in his later films Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), and Frenzy (1972).

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(born Aug. 31, 1913, Oldland Common, Gloucestershire, Eng.) British radio astronomer. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Bristol, worked for the Air Ministry during World War II, and lectured at the University of Manchester after the war. He built the first giant radio telescope (1957) at Jodrell Bank, near Manchester; with a bowl diameter of 250 ft (76 m), the instrument is used for astronomical research and spacecraft tracking and communication.

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(born Nov. 24, 1934, Engels, Volga German Autonomous S.S.R.—died Aug. 3, 1998, Hamburg, Ger.) Russian composer. He began musical training in Vienna and continued in Moscow, then taught at the Moscow Conservatory (1962–72). He scored more than 60 films and was one of the first Soviet composers to experiment with serialism. After the death of Dmitry Shostakovich, Schnittke became the Soviet Union's leading composer and gained a major international reputation as he evolved a highly eclectic style (“polystylistics”). He suffered the first of several serious strokes in 1985 but continued to compose. He wrote nine symphonies, six concerti grossi, many concertos, four string quartets, and the operas Life with an Idiot (1992), Gesualdo (1995), and Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1995).

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(born Oct. 4, 1884, Manhattan, Kan., U.S.—died Dec. 10, 1946, New York, N.Y.) U.S. journalist and short-story writer. He served in the Spanish-American War as a teenager. After returning to the U.S. he wrote for newspapers in the West. In 1911 he moved to New York, where he developed a style focusing on the underside of city life and began to write stories. He is best known for Guys and Dolls (1931), a collection of stories about a racy section of Broadway written in the uniquely rendered slang that became his trademark and gave rise to the term Runyonesque; the book was adapted as a musical by Frank Loesser (1950).

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(born Jan. 12, 1893, Reval, Estonia—died Oct. 16, 1946, Nürnberg, Ger.) German Nazi ideologue. As editor of the Nazi Party newspaper from 1921, he drew on the ideas of the English racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain for his books espousing German racial purity and anti-Semitism, which reinforced Adolf Hitler's own extreme prejudices. In World War II he oversaw the transport of stolen art into Germany and was a government official in the occupied eastern territories. After the war he was tried at the Nürnberg trials and hanged as a war criminal.

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(born Jan. 17, 1881, Birmingham, Warwick, Eng.—died Oct. 24, 1955, London) British social anthropologist. He taught at the universities of Cape Town, Sydney, Chicago, and Oxford. In his version of functionalism, he viewed the component parts of society (e.g., the kinship system, the legal system) as having an indispensable function for one another, the continued existence of one component being dependent on that of the other, and he developed a systematic framework of concepts relating to the social structures of small-scale societies. He had a profound impact on British and American social anthropology. Among his major works are The Andaman Islanders (1922) and Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952).

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(born Oct. 21, 1833, Stockholm, Swed.—died Dec. 10, 1896, San Remo, Italy) Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist. His attempts to find a safe way to handle nitroglycerin resulted in the invention of dynamite and the blasting cap. He built a network of factories to manufacture dynamite and corporations to produce and market his explosives. He went on to develop more powerful explosives and to construct and perfect detonators for explosives that did not explode on simple firing (e.g., when lit with a match). Nobel registered more than 350 patents, many unrelated to explosives (e.g., artificial silk and leather). A complex personality, both dynamic and reclusive, he was a pacifist but was labeled the “merchant of death” for inventing explosives used in war. Perhaps to counter this label, he left most of his immense fortune, from worldwide explosives and oil interests, to establish the Nobel Prizes, which would become the most highly regarded of all international awards.

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(born Dec. 11, 1810, Paris, France—died May 2, 1857, Paris) French playwright and poet. A member of a noble family, Musset came under the influence of Romanticism in adolescence and produced his first work, Stories of Spain and of Italy, in 1830. After an early play failed, he published historical tragedies (e.g., Lorenzaccio, 1834) and comedies. Although he refused to let them be performed, he is remembered today primarily as a dramatist. His poetry includes light satirical pieces and passionate, eloquent lyrics such as “The October Night” (1837). A fitful love affair with George Sand inspired some of his finest work.

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(born July 26, 1842, London, Eng.—died July 13, 1924, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) British economist, one of the founders of English neoclassical economics. The first principal of University College, Bristol (1877–81), and a professor at the University of Cambridge (1885–1908), he reexamined and extended the ideas of classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. His best-known work, Principles of Economics (1890), introduced several influential economic concepts, including elasticity of demand, consumer's surplus, and the representative firm. His writings on the theory of value proposed time as a factor in analysis and reconciled the classical cost-of-production principle with the theory of marginal utility. Seealso classical economics.

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(born Sept. 27, 1840, West Point, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 1, 1914, Quogue, N.Y.) U.S. naval officer and historian. He studied at the U.S. Naval Academy, and his nearly 40 years of active naval duty included fighting in the American Civil War. He was president of the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. (1886–89). His classic analysis The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890) argued that sea power was decisive in determining national supremacy. In The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (1892), he stressed the interdependence of military and commercial control of the sea. Avidly read in Britain and Germany, both books greatly influenced the buildup of naval forces before World War I.

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(born Aug. 31, 1913, Oldland Common, Gloucestershire, Eng.) British radio astronomer. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Bristol, worked for the Air Ministry during World War II, and lectured at the University of Manchester after the war. He built the first giant radio telescope (1957) at Jodrell Bank, near Manchester; with a bowl diameter of 250 ft (76 m), the instrument is used for astronomical research and spacecraft tracking and communication.

Learn more about Lovell, Sir (Alfred Charles) Bernard with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born June 11, 1876, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died Oct. 5, 1960, Paris, Fr.) U.S. anthropologist. Trained under Franz Boas (Ph.D., 1901), he later taught at the University of California at Berkeley. Kroeber's career nearly coincided with the emergence of academic, professionalized anthropology in the U.S. and contributed significantly to its development. He made valuable contributions to American Indian ethnology, New World archaeology, and the study of linguistics, folklore, kinship, and culture. His most influential books are considered to be Anthropology (1923) and The Nature of Culture (1952). His daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929), was a noted science fiction and fantasy writer.

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(born Sept. 12, 1892, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 11, 1984, Purchase, N.Y.) U.S. publisher. He worked a short time in publishing before he and his wife, Blanche, founded their own firm, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1915. His appreciation of contemporary literature and his literary contacts helped make the firm renowned for publishing works of high literary quality. By the time of his death, authors published by the firm had won 16 Nobel and 27 Pulitzer prizes. In 1966 it became a subsidiary of Random House, Inc. Knopf also published the American Mercury (1924–34), an influential periodical he cofounded with H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan.

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(born May 27, 1923, Fürth, Ger.) German-born U.S. political scientist and foreign-policy adviser (1969–76). He immigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1938. He taught at Harvard University, where he directed the Defense Studies Program (1959–69). He was appointed assistant for national security affairs by Pres. Richard Nixon in 1968 and served as head of the National Security Council from 1969 to 1975; he was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. He developed the policy of détente toward the Soviet Union, which led to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreements. He also initiated the first official U.S. contact with China. Although he at first advocated a hard-line policy on Vietnam, he later negotiated the cease-fire agreement that ended the Vietnam War, for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973 with Le Duc Tho (who refused it). After leaving government service, he became an international consultant, lecturer, and writer.

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(born June 23, 1894, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died Aug. 25, 1956, Bloomington, Ind.) U.S. zoologist and expert on human sexual behaviour. After earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1920, he taught zoology at Indiana University, where he became the founder-director, in 1942, of the university's Institute for Sex Research (renamed the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, Inc., in 1981). His inquiries into human sexuality led him to publish Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). These reports, based on 18,500 personal interviews, received extraordinary publicity for their conclusions about contemporary sexual mores and behaviour. Kinsey's methodologies and statistical samplings, however, have been highly questioned and criticized in recent years.

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(born Oct. 29, 1885, Marquette, Mich., U.S.—died June 11, 1963, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. archaeologist. Kidder received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1914) for developing the first effective pottery typology relating to the prehistory of the southwestern U.S. He later extended these interests to a classic study (1924) of the development of the Pueblo cultures and to the creation (1927) of a widely used archaeological classification system (the Pecos system) for the Southwest. In 1929 he also organized an interdisciplinary program that resulted in a far-reaching survey of cultural history in the Old and New Maya empires of Mexico and Central America. He taught at Phillips (Andover) Academy (1915–35) and at Harvard University (1939–50) and oversaw various programs at the Carnegie Institution (1927–50). He was considered the foremost archaeologist of the American Southwest and Mesoamerica of his generation.

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(born June 5, 1915, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died June 5, 1998, New York, N.Y.) U.S. literary critic. His sweeping historical study of modern American literature, On Native Grounds (1942), won him instant recognition. Much of his criticism appeared in Partisan Review, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. His books include Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), New York Jew (1978), A Writer's America (1988), and God and the American Writer (1997).

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(born Jan. 1, 1879, Rhosfelyn, Glamorgan, Wales—died Feb. 11, 1958, London, Eng.) Welsh psychoanalyst. After he became a member of London's Royal College of Physicians, his interest gradually shifted to psychiatry. With Carl Gustav Jung he organized the first psychoanalytic conference (Salzburg, 1908), where he met Sigmund Freud. Jones was instrumental in introducing psychoanalysis to Britain and North America; in 1919 he founded the British Psycho-Analytical Institute, and in 1920 he founded the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis,which he edited until 1939. After the Nazi takeover of Austria, he helped the ailing Freud and his family to escape to London. His biography of Freud, enh1d The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (3 vol., 1953–57), was for many years the standard biography.

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(born Sept. 8, 1873, Laval, France—died Nov. 1, 1907, Paris) French writer. He went to Paris to live on his inheritance at age 18; after exhausting it, he led a life of calculated buffoonery. His farce Ubu Roi (1896), considered a forerunner of theatre of the absurd and of Surrealism, featured the grotesque Père Ubu, who becomes king of Poland. Jarry followed it with two sequels, one of which was published posthumously. The brilliant imagery and wit of his stories, novels, and poems usually lapse into incoherence and unintelligible symbolism. A heavy drinker, he died at 34.

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(born June 19, 1865, Hannover, Hannover—died March 12, 1951, Kükenbruch, W.Ger.) German industrialist and political leader. As chairman of the Krupp family's industrial concern (1909–18), he built a huge newspaper and film empire and greatly influenced German public opinion during the Weimar Republic. As head of the conservative German National People's Party (from 1928), he contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power. In 1931 he formed an alliance of nationalist and conservative elements to topple the Weimar government; though his effort failed, large contributions from German industrialists aided the Nazi Party's growth. In 1933 he briefly served in Hitler's cabinet, but his party was dissolved that same year.

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(born Aug. 13, 1899, London, Eng.—died April 29, 1980, Bel Air, Calif., U.S.) British-born film director. He worked in the London office of a U.S. film company from 1920 and was promoted to director in 1925. His film The Lodger (1926) concerned an ordinary person caught in extraordinary events, a theme that was to recur in many of his films. Fascinated with voyeurism and crime, he proved himself a master of suspense with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934; remade 1956), The 39 Steps (1935), and The Lady Vanishes (1938). His first U.S. film, Rebecca (1940), was a tense psychological drama. His virtuosity was evident in his later films Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), and Frenzy (1972).

Learn more about Hitchcock, Sir Alfred with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born May 27, 1923, Fürth, Ger.) German-born U.S. political scientist and foreign-policy adviser (1969–76). He immigrated with his family to the U.S. in 1938. He taught at Harvard University, where he directed the Defense Studies Program (1959–69). He was appointed assistant for national security affairs by Pres. Richard Nixon in 1968 and served as head of the National Security Council from 1969 to 1975; he was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. He developed the policy of détente toward the Soviet Union, which led to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreements. He also initiated the first official U.S. contact with China. Although he at first advocated a hard-line policy on Vietnam, he later negotiated the cease-fire agreement that ended the Vietnam War, for which he shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1973 with Le Duc Tho (who refused it). After leaving government service, he became an international consultant, lecturer, and writer.

Learn more about Kissinger, Henry A(lfred) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Aug. 9, 1911, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.—died March 14, 1995, Pasadena, Calif.) U.S. nuclear astrophysicist. He received his Ph.D. from Caltech and became a professor there in 1939. His theory of element generation (nucleosynthesis) suggests that, as stars evolve, chemical elements are synthesized progressively (light to heavy) by means of nuclear fusion that also produces light and heat and that the heaviest elements are synthesized in supernovas. For his theory he shared a 1983 Nobel Prize with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. He is also known for his work in radio astronomy with Fred Hoyle.

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(born Dec. 6, 1898, Dirschau, West Prussia—died Aug. 23, 1995, Oak Bluffs, Mass., U.S.) German-born U.S. photojournalist. He became a professional photographer in Berlin in 1929 and came under the influence of Erich Salomon. His work appeared in many European picture magazines in the 1930s. In 1935 he immigrated to New York City, where he became one of the first four photographers hired by Life (1936). He would contribute more than 2,500 picture stories and 90 cover photos to the magazine, including outstanding portraits of kings, dictators, film stars, and ordinary people.

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(born Nov. 20, 1908, Salford, Lancashire [now in Greater Manchester], Eng.—died March 30, 2004, New York, N.Y., U.S.) British-U.S. journalist and commentator. Cooke settled in New York City after studies at the University of Cambridge and at Yale and Harvard universities. From the late 1930s he provided lively and insightful interpretations of American culture and history to British audiences in newspapers and radio broadcasts. His weekly radio program Letter from America (1946–2004) was one of the longest-running series on radio; One Man's America (1952) and Talk About America (1968) collect many of its texts. His television programs include Omnibus (1956–61) and the BBC-produced series America (1972–73). He hosted television's Masterpiece Theatre from the 1970s to the early '90s.

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(born July 8, 1857, Nice, France—died Oct. 18, 1911, Paris) French psychologist. His interest in Jean-Martin Charcot's work on hypnosis prompted him to abandon a law career and study medicine at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (1878–91). He served as director of a research laboratory at the Sorbonne (1895–1911). A major figure in the development of experimental psychology in France, he founded L'Année Psychologique, the first French journal on psychology, in 1895. He developed experimental techniques to measure reasoning ability; between 1905 and 1911 he and Theodore Simon developed influential scales for the measurement of intelligence of children. His works include Experimental Study of Intelligence (1903) and A Method of Measuring the Development of the Intelligence of Young Children (1915).

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(born March 19, 1849, Küstrin, Prussia—died March 6, 1930, Ebenhausen, near Munich, Ger.) German naval commander. The son of a Prussian civil servant, he enlisted in the Prussian Navy in 1865, attended the Kiel Naval School, and was commissioned in 1869. As commander of a torpedo-boat flotilla, he devised new tactical principles. Promoted to rear admiral, he commanded a cruiser squadron in East Asia (1896–97). In 1897 he became secretary of state of the imperial navy department and reorganized the German navy into a formidable high-seas fleet. Promoted to grand admiral (1911), he favoured unlimited submarine warfare in World War I, but opposition to his policy led to his resignation in 1916. In 1917 he cofounded the patriotic Fatherland Party.

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(born Oct. 29, 1885, Marquette, Mich., U.S.—died June 11, 1963, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. archaeologist. Kidder received his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1914) for developing the first effective pottery typology relating to the prehistory of the southwestern U.S. He later extended these interests to a classic study (1924) of the development of the Pueblo cultures and to the creation (1927) of a widely used archaeological classification system (the Pecos system) for the Southwest. In 1929 he also organized an interdisciplinary program that resulted in a far-reaching survey of cultural history in the Old and New Maya empires of Mexico and Central America. He taught at Phillips (Andover) Academy (1915–35) and at Harvard University (1939–50) and oversaw various programs at the Carnegie Institution (1927–50). He was considered the foremost archaeologist of the American Southwest and Mesoamerica of his generation.

Learn more about Kidder, Alfred V(incent) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Sept. 27, 1840, West Point, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 1, 1914, Quogue, N.Y.) U.S. naval officer and historian. He studied at the U.S. Naval Academy, and his nearly 40 years of active naval duty included fighting in the American Civil War. He was president of the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. (1886–89). His classic analysis The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890) argued that sea power was decisive in determining national supremacy. In The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (1892), he stressed the interdependence of military and commercial control of the sea. Avidly read in Britain and Germany, both books greatly influenced the buildup of naval forces before World War I.

Learn more about Mahan, Alfred Thayer with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born Jan. 1, 1864, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died July 13, 1946, New York, N.Y.) U.S. photographer and exhibitor of modern art. He was taken to Europe by his wealthy family to further his education in 1881. In 1883 he abandoned engineering studies in Berlin for a photographic career. Returning to the U.S. in 1890, he made the first successful photographs in snow, in rain, and at night. In 1902 he founded the Photo-Secession group to establish photography as an art. His own best photographs are perhaps two series (1917–27), one of portraits of his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe, and the other of cloud shapes corresponding to emotional experiences. His photographs were the first to be exhibited in major U.S. museums. He also was the first to exhibit, at his “291” gallery in New York City, works of modern European and U.S. painters, five years before the Armory Show.

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(born Oct. 30, 1839, Paris, Fr.—died Jan. 29, 1899, Moret-sur-Loing) British-French landscape painter. Born in Paris to English parents, he began painting as an amateur. His early style was much influenced by Camille Corot. He became associated with Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir and with them became one of the founders of Impressionism. His works, mostly landscapes, are distinguished from those of his colleagues by their softly harmonious values. His family was ruined by the Franco-Prussian War, and his life was a constant struggle against poverty. Not until after his death did his talent begin to be widely recognized.

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(born Jan. 8, 1823, Usk, Monmouthshire, Wales—died Nov. 7, 1913, Broadstone, Dorset, Eng.) British naturalist. Though trained as a surveyor and architect, he became interested in botany and traveled to the Amazon in 1848 to collect specimens. In 1854–62 he toured the Malay Archipelago, augmenting his collection. His observations of the islands led to his developing a theory of the origin of species through natural selection independently of, and simultaneously with, Charles Darwin, though Darwin developed his own theory in much greater detail, provided far more evidence for it, and was mainly responsible for its acceptance. Unlike Darwin, Wallace insisted that the higher mental capacities of humans could not have arisen by natural selection but that some nonbiological agency must have been responsible. He hypothesized a boundary (Wallace's line) running between the islands of the Malay Archipelago, between the Oriental and Australasian faunal regions, many animals abundant on one side being absent on the other. In the realm of public policy he supported socialism, pacifism, land nationalization, and women's suffrage. His works include Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870), Geographical Distribution of Animals (2 vol., 1876), and Darwinism (1889).

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(born Jan. 12, 1893, Reval, Estonia—died Oct. 16, 1946, Nürnberg, Ger.) German Nazi ideologue. As editor of the Nazi Party newspaper from 1921, he drew on the ideas of the English racist Houston Stewart Chamberlain for his books espousing German racial purity and anti-Semitism, which reinforced Adolf Hitler's own extreme prejudices. In World War II he oversaw the transport of stolen art into Germany and was a government official in the occupied eastern territories. After the war he was tried at the Nürnberg trials and hanged as a war criminal.

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(born Jan. 17, 1881, Birmingham, Warwick, Eng.—died Oct. 24, 1955, London) British social anthropologist. He taught at the universities of Cape Town, Sydney, Chicago, and Oxford. In his version of functionalism, he viewed the component parts of society (e.g., the kinship system, the legal system) as having an indispensable function for one another, the continued existence of one component being dependent on that of the other, and he developed a systematic framework of concepts relating to the social structures of small-scale societies. He had a profound impact on British and American social anthropology. Among his major works are The Andaman Islanders (1922) and Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952).

Learn more about Radcliffe-Brown, A(lfred) R(eginald) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

(born May 23, 1875, New Haven, Conn., U.S.—died Feb. 17, 1966, New York, N.Y.) U.S. corporate executive. He began his career at the Hyatt Roller Bearing Co. in New Jersey and became its president at age 26. Hyatt was later acquired by General Motors Corp. (GM), and Sloan rose to become president and chief executive officer of GM in 1923. Under his leadership it surpassed Ford Motor Co. in sales and became the largest corporation in the world. He served as chairman of the board from 1937 to his retirement in 1956. A noted philanthropist, he endowed the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and contributed to the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and to the school of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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(born Feb. 15, 1861, Ramsgate, Isle of Thanet, Kent, Eng.—died Dec. 30, 1947, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.) British mathematician and philosopher. He taught principally at the University of Cambridge (1885–1911) and Harvard University (1924–37). His Treatise on Universal Algebra (1898) extended Boolean symbolic logic. He collaborated with Bertrand Russell on the epochal Principia Mathematica (1910–13), which attempted to establish the thesis of logicism. In Process and Reality (1929), his major work in metaphysics, he proposed that the universe consists entirely of becomings, each a process of appropriating and integrating the infinity of items provided by the antecedent universe and by God. His other works include “On Mathematical Concepts of the Material World” (1905), An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge (1919), The Concept of Nature (1920), Science and the Modern World (1925), and Religion in the Making (1926). He received the Order of Merit in 1945.

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(born July 26, 1842, London, Eng.—died July 13, 1924, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire) British economist, one of the founders of English neoclassical economics. The first principal of University College, Bristol (1877–81), and a professor at the University of Cambridge (1885–1908), he reexamined and extended the ideas of classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. His best-known work, Principles of Economics (1890), introduced several influential economic concepts, including elasticity of demand, consumer's surplus, and the representative firm. His writings on the theory of value proposed time as a factor in analysis and reconciled the classical cost-of-production principle with the theory of marginal utility. Seealso classical economics.

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(born June 11, 1876, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died Oct. 5, 1960, Paris, Fr.) U.S. anthropologist. Trained under Franz Boas (Ph.D., 1901), he later taught at the University of California at Berkeley. Kroeber's career nearly coincided with the emergence of academic, professionalized anthropology in the U.S. and contributed significantly to its development. He made valuable contributions to American Indian ethnology, New World archaeology, and the study of linguistics, folklore, kinship, and culture. His most influential books are considered to be Anthropology (1923) and The Nature of Culture (1952). His daughter, Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929), was a noted science fiction and fantasy writer.

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(born Nov. 1, 1880, Berlin, Ger.—died Nov. 1930, Greenland) German meteorologist and geophysicist. After earning a Ph.D. in astronomy (1905), he became interested in paleoclimatology and traveled to Greenland to research polar air circulation. He formulated the first complete statement of the continental drift hypothesis, which he presented in The Origin of Continents and Oceans (1915). His theory won some adherents, but by 1930 most geologists had rejected it because of the implausibility of his postulations for the driving force behind the continents' movement. It was resurrected in the 1960s as part of the theory of plate tectonics. Wegener died during his fourth expedition to Greenland.

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(born June 5, 1915, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—died June 5, 1998, New York, N.Y.) U.S. literary critic. His sweeping historical study of modern American literature, On Native Grounds (1942), won him instant recognition. Much of his criticism appeared in Partisan Review, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. His books include Starting Out in the Thirties (1965), New York Jew (1978), A Writer's America (1988), and God and the American Writer (1997).

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(born Sept. 8, 1873, Laval, France—died Nov. 1, 1907, Paris) French writer. He went to Paris to live on his inheritance at age 18; after exhausting it, he led a life of calculated buffoonery. His farce Ubu Roi (1896), considered a forerunner of theatre of the absurd and of Surrealism, featured the grotesque Père Ubu, who becomes king of Poland. Jarry followed it with two sequels, one of which was published posthumously. The brilliant imagery and wit of his stories, novels, and poems usually lapse into incoherence and unintelligible symbolism. A heavy drinker, he died at 34.

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(born June 19, 1865, Hannover, Hannover—died March 12, 1951, Kükenbruch, W.Ger.) German industrialist and political leader. As chairman of the Krupp family's industrial concern (1909–18), he built a huge newspaper and film empire and greatly influenced German public opinion during the Weimar Republic. As head of the conservative German National People's Party (from 1928), he contributed to Adolf Hitler's rise to power. In 1931 he formed an alliance of nationalist and conservative elements to topple the Weimar government; though his effort failed, large contributions from German industrialists aided the Nazi Party's growth. In 1933 he briefly served in Hitler's cabinet, but his party was dissolved that same year.

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(born Nov. 24, 1934, Engels, Volga German Autonomous S.S.R.—died Aug. 3, 1998, Hamburg, Ger.) Russian composer. He began musical training in Vienna and continued in Moscow, then taught at the Moscow Conservatory (1962–72). He scored more than 60 films and was one of the first Soviet composers to experiment with serialism. After the death of Dmitry Shostakovich, Schnittke became the Soviet Union's leading composer and gained a major international reputation as he evolved a highly eclectic style (“polystylistics”). He suffered the first of several serious strokes in 1985 but continued to compose. He wrote nine symphonies, six concerti grossi, many concertos, four string quartets, and the operas Life with an Idiot (1992), Gesualdo (1995), and Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1995).

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(born Dec. 30, 1873, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Oct. 4, 1944, New York City) U.S. politician. After working in the Fulton fish market to help support his family, he began his political career with a job from Tammany Hall (1895). In the state assembly (1903–15), he rose to speaker, then served in city political posts. As governor of New York (1919–20, 1923–28) he worked for improved housing, child welfare, and efficient government. In 1928 he won the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party, the first Roman Catholic to do so, but he was easily defeated by Herbert Hoover. He later opposed the New Deal programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt and supported Republican presidential candidates for president in 1936 and 1940.

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(born Dec. 6, 1898, Dirschau, West Prussia—died Aug. 23, 1995, Oak Bluffs, Mass., U.S.) German-born U.S. photojournalist. He became a professional photographer in Berlin in 1929 and came under the influence of Erich Salomon. His work appeared in many European picture magazines in the 1930s. In 1935 he immigrated to New York City, where he became one of the first four photographers hired by Life (1936). He would contribute more than 2,500 picture stories and 90 cover photos to the magazine, including outstanding portraits of kings, dictators, film stars, and ordinary people.

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(born March 26, 1859, Fockbury, Worcestershire, Eng.—died April 30, 1936, Cambridge) English scholar and poet. While working as a Patent Office clerk, he studied Latin texts and wrote journal articles that led to his appointment as a professor at University College, London, and later at Cambridge. His major scholarly effort was an annotated edition (1903–30) of Marcus Manilius (fl.1st century AD). His first poetry volume, A Shropshire Lad (1896)—with its much-anthologized “When I was One-and Twenty”—was based on Classical and traditional models; its lyrics express a Romantic pessimism in a spare, simple style. It gradually grew popular, and his second volume, Last Poems (1922), was extremely successful. Other works include the lecture The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933) and the posthumous collection More Poems (1936). His brother is the novelist and playwright Laurence Housman (1865–1959).

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(born June 23, 1894, Hoboken, N.J., U.S.—died Aug. 25, 1956, Bloomington, Ind.) U.S. zoologist and expert on human sexual behaviour. After earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1920, he taught zoology at Indiana University, where he became the founder-director, in 1942, of the university's Institute for Sex Research (renamed the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, Inc., in 1981). His inquiries into human sexuality led him to publish Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). These reports, based on 18,500 personal interviews, received extraordinary publicity for their conclusions about contemporary sexual mores and behaviour. Kinsey's methodologies and statistical samplings, however, have been highly questioned and criticized in recent years.

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(born July 8, 1857, Nice, France—died Oct. 18, 1911, Paris) French psychologist. His interest in Jean-Martin Charcot's work on hypnosis prompted him to abandon a law career and study medicine at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (1878–91). He served as director of a research laboratory at the Sorbonne (1895–1911). A major figure in the development of experimental psychology in France, he founded L'Année Psychologique, the first French journal on psychology, in 1895. He developed experimental techniques to measure reasoning ability; between 1905 and 1911 he and Theodore Simon developed influential scales for the measurement of intelligence of children. His works include Experimental Study of Intelligence (1903) and A Method of Measuring the Development of the Intelligence of Young Children (1915).

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(born Oct. 21, 1833, Stockholm, Swed.—died Dec. 10, 1896, San Remo, Italy) Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist. His attempts to find a safe way to handle nitroglycerin resulted in the invention of dynamite and the blasting cap. He built a network of factories to manufacture dynamite and corporations to produce and market his explosives. He went on to develop more powerful explosives and to construct and perfect detonators for explosives that did not explode on simple firing (e.g., when lit with a match). Nobel registered more than 350 patents, many unrelated to explosives (e.g., artificial silk and leather). A complex personality, both dynamic and reclusive, he was a pacifist but was labeled the “merchant of death” for inventing explosives used in war. Perhaps to counter this label, he left most of his immense fortune, from worldwide explosives and oil interests, to establish the Nobel Prizes, which would become the most highly regarded of all international awards.

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(born Feb. 7, 1870, Penzing, Austria—died May 28, 1937, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scot.) Austrian psychiatrist. He earned his medical degree in Vienna, and from his earliest years as a physician he stressed consideration of the individual in relation to his total environment. A student and associate of Sigmund Freud (1902–11), he eventually broke with Freud over the importance of early-childhood sexual conflicts in the development of psychopathology. With his followers he developed the school of individual psychology—the humanistic study of drives, feelings, emotions, and memory in the context of the individual's overall life plan. Adler advanced the theory of the inferiority complex to explain cases of psychopathology; Adlerian psychotherapy sought to direct patients emotionally disabled by inferiority feelings toward maturity, common sense, and social usefulness. He established the first child guidance clinic in 1921 in Vienna. He taught in the U.S. (at Columbia University and the Long Island College of Medicine) from 1927 until his death. His works include Understanding Human Nature (1927) and What Life Should Mean to You (1931).

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(born Sept. 12, 1892, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 11, 1984, Purchase, N.Y.) U.S. publisher. He worked a short time in publishing before he and his wife, Blanche, founded their own firm, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., in 1915. His appreciation of contemporary literature and his literary contacts helped make the firm renowned for publishing works of high literary quality. By the time of his death, authors published by the firm had won 16 Nobel and 27 Pulitzer prizes. In 1966 it became a subsidiary of Random House, Inc. Knopf also published the American Mercury (1924–34), an influential periodical he cofounded with H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan.

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known as Alfred the Great

(born 849—died 899) King of Wessex (871–99) in southwestern England. He joined his brother Ethelred I in confronting a Danish army in Mercia (868). Succeeding his brother as king, Alfred fought the Danes in Wessex in 871 and again in 878, when he was the only West Saxon leader to refuse to submit to their authority and was driven from the kingdom to the island of Athelney. He defeated the Danes at the Battle of Edington (878) and saved Kent from another Danish invasion in 885. The next year he took the offensive and captured London, a success that brought all the English not under Danish rule to accept him as king. The conquest of the Danelaw by his successors was enabled by his strategy, which included the construction of forts and a naval fleet and the reformation of the army. Alfred drew up an important code of laws (see Anglo-Saxon law) and promoted literacy and learning, personally translating Latin works by Boethius, Pope Gregory I, and St. Augustine of Hippo into Anglo-Saxon. The compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was begun under his reign.

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(born Feb. 7, 1870, Penzing, Austria—died May 28, 1937, Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scot.) Austrian psychiatrist. He earned his medical degree in Vienna, and from his earliest years as a physician he stressed consideration of the individual in relation to his total environment. A student and associate of Sigmund Freud (1902–11), he eventually broke with Freud over the importance of early-childhood sexual conflicts in the development of psychopathology. With his followers he developed the school of individual psychology—the humanistic study of drives, feelings, emotions, and memory in the context of the individual's overall life plan. Adler advanced the theory of the inferiority complex to explain cases of psychopathology; Adlerian psychotherapy sought to direct patients emotionally disabled by inferiority feelings toward maturity, common sense, and social usefulness. He established the first child guidance clinic in 1921 in Vienna. He taught in the U.S. (at Columbia University and the Long Island College of Medicine) from 1927 until his death. His works include Understanding Human Nature (1927) and What Life Should Mean to You (1931).

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Alfred may refer to:

In places:

• Alfred, Maine
• Alfred (village), New York
• Alfred (town), New York
• Alfred, Ontario
• Lake Alfred, Florida

In fiction:

• Alfred, a penguin character in the French comic strip Zig et Puce
• Alfred J. Kwak, A Dutch animated television series
• Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's butler in the Batman universe
• Alfred Brooks, the main character in The Contender by Robert Lipsyte
• Alfred (play), a 1740 masque by David Mallet and James Thomson
• Alfred (YuYu Hakusho) or Kazuma Kuwabara, a character in the Philippine version of YuYu Hakusho media

In other uses:

• Alfred Publishing, a sheet music publisher
• Alfred State College, New York
• Alfred University, New York

In people

• Alfred (name)
• Alfred the Great, king of Wessex
• Alfred Aetheling, son of King Ethelred II of England
• Alfred (bishop)

See also

• Alfredo