1001 People Who Made America - Alan Axelrod [131]
Vespucci, Amerigo (1454–1512) This Italian navigator participated in New World voyages during 1499–1500 and 1501–1502 and served Spain as piloto mayor (“master navigator”) from 1508 to 1512. In 1507, the German geographer Martin Waldseemhller coined the name “America” in his Cosmographiae Introductio, mistakenly attributing the discovery of the New World to Vespucci, whose earliest New World voyage was in 1499, seven years after Columbus.
von Neumann, John (1903–1957) Born in Hungary and educated there as well as in Germany and Switzerland, von Neumann immigrated to the United States in 1930 to teach at Princeton. He made fundamental contributions to mathematics (including the definition of ordinal numbers) and physics (his 1932 Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics remains standard), then created the field of game theory, with special application in economics. In computer science, von Neumann pioneered logical design.
Wainwright, Jonathan (1883–1953) Wainwright was second in command to Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines at the outbreak of World War II. After MacArthur was ordered to evacuate, Wainwright was in command of the desperate defense of the island against overwhelming Japanese invasion forces. He held out as long as possible, making the invasion far more costly than the Japanese had anticipated, but finally surrendered on May 6, 1942. He and his command were held as prisoners of war under the cruelest of conditions until 1945. Wainwright received the Medal of Honor.
Wald, Lillian (1867–1940) In 1893, this American nurse and social worker founded the Henry Street Settlement in New York City’s Lower East Side to serve the health needs of impoverished immigrants. In the process, she singlehandedly created the profession of public health nursing. Her work with children’s health also prompted Congress to create the U.S. Children’s Bureau in 1912 to oversee and maintain national standards of child welfare.
Walker, Alice (1944– ) Walker grew up in a family of Georgia sharecroppers, began writing as a child, attended Spelman College and Sarah Lawrence, then, during the 1960s, became active in the civil rights movement. She also worked as a teacher and started writing for publication. She is a poet and essayist, but her best-known work is her fiction, including The Color Purple (1982), about a black woman’s coming of age in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was made into a highly successful film by Steven Spielberg.
Wallace, George C. (1919–1998) Wallace was elected Alabama’s governor in 1962 largely on his pledge to maintain racial segregation in his state. He served four terms, during which he became a national symbol of southern racism during the Civil Rights movement. In 1968, he ran for president on the American Independent Party ticket, and in 1972, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was shot and paralyzed below the waist. In the 1980s, Wallace not only renounced segregation, but sought reconciliation with the black community.
Wallace, Henry A. (1888–1965) Wallace was an Iowa agricultural editor and expert, who, switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party, delivered predominantly Republican Iowa to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential elections. Wallace served as FDR’s secretary of agriculture from 1933 to 1940, successfully formulating and administering bold New Deal initiatives in an agricultural economy devastated by the Depression. Wallace became vice-president during FDR’s third