Witherspoon, John (b. Feb. 15,1723, Gifford, East Lothian, Scot.—d. Nov. 15, 1794, Tusculum, N.J., U.S.) Scottish-American clergyman. Ordained a Presbyterian minister (1745), he served in Scottish parishes until 1768, when he was sent to North America to become president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). As president, he expanded the curriculum and increased enrollment. A supporter of colo¬ nists’ rights, he was a member of the local Committee of Correspondence (1775-76) and the Continental Congress (1776-79, 1780-82); he was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. He helped organize the American Presbyterian Church as a national body (1785-89).
Witt Vvit, 'wit\, Katarina (b. Dec. 3, 1965, Karl-Marx-Stadt, E.Ger.) German figure skater. She won the first of six European championships
in 1983 and went on to win two Olympic gold medals (1984, 1988) and four World Championships (1984, 1985, 1987, 1988). She was popular with audiences, who prized her grace and elegance as much as her tech¬ nical abilities. She turned professional in 1988.
Witte \'vi-to\, Sergey (Yulyevich), Count (b. June 29, 1849, Tif- lis, Georgia, Russian Empire—d. March 13, 1915, Petrograd, Russia) Russian statesman and premier (1905-06). He entered the imperial admin¬ istrative service in 1871 and served as minister of finance (1892-1903). He improved communications, promoted construction of the Trans- Siberian Railway, and planned to modernize the Russian Empire. He rep¬ resented Russia in the negotiations that ended the Russo-Japanese War. Although opposed to constitutionalism, he persuaded Tsar Nicholas II to issue the October Manifesto in 1905 and was appointed the first consti¬ tutional premier. He organized the repression of all the forces of disrup¬ tion in 1905-06—e.g., the St. Petersburg Soviet, or workers’ council, the troop mutinies in the Far East, strikes in South Russia, and peasant upris¬ ings in the Baltic provinces—and he concluded arrangements with Euro¬ pean bankers for a series of loans that restored Russian finances. In 1906 the tsar, favouring a more conservative regime, replaced him with Pyotr Stolypin. He never returned to office, and in 1914-15 he vainly opposed Russian entry into World War I and was sympathetic to peace feelers put out by the German government through Witte’s own German banker.
Wittelsbach Vvi-tols-.bakX, house of German noble family that ruled in Bavaria from the 12th to the 20th century. In 1124 Otto V, count of Scheyem (d. 1155), moved the family residence to the castle of Wittels¬ bach and took its name. In 1180 his son Otto VI became Otto I, duke of Bavaria. In 1214 Otto II obtained the Palatinate of the Rhine. A descen¬ dant, Louis IV, as Holy Roman emperor, divided the lands and granted the Palatinate to his nephew, Rupert, who obtained the title of elector (r. 1353-90). Several divisions of ducal Bavaria were reunited under Albert IV (d. 1508). The Bavarian dukes became electors from 1623, and the last direct line died out in 1777. The Palatine branch united with Bavaria in 1799 under Duke Maximilian IV Joseph, who became king of Bavaria (1806) as Maximilian I. His descendants (including Louis I and Louis II) were kings until the abdication of Louis III in 1918.
Wittgenstein Vvit-gon-.shtlnN, Ludwig (Josef Johann) (b. April 26, 1889, Vienna—d. April 29, 1951, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.) Austrian-born English philosopher, regarded by many as the greatest phi¬ losopher of the 20th century. He was bom into an immensely wealthy and cultivated family. In 1908 he went to Manchester, Eng., to study aero¬ nautics. He soon developed an obsessive interest in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, and in 1911 he went to Cambridge to study logic with Bertrand Russell. Within a year he had learned all Russell had to teach; he then went to Norway, where he worked on logic in isolation in a wooden hut he built by the side of a fjord. There he developed in embryo what became known as the “picture theory” of meaning, a central tenet of which is that a proposition can express a fact by virtue of sharing with it a common structure, or “logical form.” When World War I broke out he joined the Austrian army, winning several decorations for bravery while serving on the Russian front. During the war he worked on a manu¬ script that was later published as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922). Believing that he had solved all the major problems of philosophy, he abandoned the subject after the war and spent the next 10 years as a schoolteacher and doing other odd jobs in a remote Austrian village. Meanwhile, the Tractatus had attracted the attention of philosophers in Cambridge and Vienna, including those of the Vienna Circle of logical positivists (see logical positivism), some of whose meetings Wittgenstein was persuaded to join. He returned to Cambridge in 1929. During the early 1930s his ideas changed rapidly, and he gradually abandoned the doc¬ trines of the Tractatus', indeed, he began to conceive of philosophy in radically different terms, as not the construction of theories designed to answer philosophical questions but as the activity of clearing up concep¬ tual confusions arising from inattention to or misunderstandings of ordi¬ nary uses of language. What became known as the works of the “later Wittgenstein”—including Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956), Philosophical Grammar (1974), Philosophical Remarks (1975), and especially Philosophical Investigations (1953)—can be considered attempts to refine and definitively express this new approach. Though he worked with fierce energy and wrote prodigiously, he would allow none of his work from this period to be published in his lifetime. In 1939 he was appointed to the chair in philosophy at Cambridge previously held by G.E. Moore. Disliking professional philosophy, he resigned the post
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2070 I Witz ► Wolfe
in 1947 to live in seclusion in Ireland and then with various friends. Diag¬ nosed with terminal cancer in 1949, he continued working intensively until two days before his death. See also analytic philosophy.
Witz \'vits\, Konrad (b. c. 1400, Rottweil, Baden-Wiirttemberg—d. c. 1445, Basel or Geneva, Swiss Con¬ federation) German-born Swiss painter. In 1434 he entered the paint¬ ers’ guild in Basel, where he worked most of his life. Little else is known of his life. His masterpiece, The Miraculous Draft of Fishes (1444), from an altarpiece for the cathedral of Geneva, exemplifies such precise realism that the light reflected off the water’s surface is carefully distin¬ guished from the light reflected off the stones beneath the shallow water.
He was one of the first German painters to show the influence of early Netherlandish art and one of the first European artists to incorpo¬ rate realistic landscapes into reli¬ gious paintings.
Wtadystaw II Jagietto Wla-'dis-laL.-yag-'yel-loN (b. c. 1351—d. May 31/June 1, 1434, Grodek, near Lwow, Galicia, Pol.) Grand duke of Lithuania (1377-1401) and king of Poland (1386-1434), founder of the Jagiellon dynasty. He had to defeat rivals, including his cousin Vytautas, in order to secure his rule in Lithuania. He married the Polish queen Jad- wiga (1386) after agreeing to Christianize Lithuania and unite it with Poland. He regained Ruthenia from Hungary (1387) and made the prince of Moldavia his vassal. He signed a treaty (1401) recognizing Vytautas as duke on the condition that Poland and Lithuania pursued a common foreign policy, and together they broke the power of the Teutonic Order.
Wobblies See Industrial Workers of the World
Wodehouse \'wud-,haus\ / Sir P(elham) G(renville) (b. Oct. 15, 1881, Guildford, Surrey, Eng.—d. Feb. 14, 1975, Southampton, N.Y., U.S.) English-born U.S. novelist, short-story writer, lyricist, and play¬ wright. He lived for long periods in the U.S. and France after 1909, and he settled in the U.S. after World War II. He is best known as the creator of the character of the young bachelor Bertie Wooster and his effortlessly superior manservant, Jeeves, who appeared in comic stories and novels from “Extricating Young Gussie” (1915) to Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971). Wodehouse wrote more than 90 books and 20 film scripts and collabo¬ rated on many plays and musical comedies, writing lyrics for Jerome Kern {Leave It to Jane, 1917; Show Boat , 1927), George Gershwin {Oh, Kay!, 1926), and others.