Marie Winn
American ornithologist
Marie Winn (née Wienerová; October 21, 1936 – December 25, 2024) was an American journalist, author, and bird-watcher. She is known for her books and articles on the wildlife of Central Park and her Wall Street Journal Leisure & Arts column. She appears in Frederic Lilien's documentary film, The Legend of Pale Male (2010). She is also known for writing The Plug-In Drug (1977), which explored the impact of television on young children, and for her involvement in the quiz show scandals of the 1950s. She died in New York City on December 25, 2024, at the age of 88.
Early life
Born into a Jewish family in 1936 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Winn was one of two daughters of Hanna (née Taussig) and Josef Wiener aka Joseph A. Winn, a psychiatrist; her sister was the writer Janet Malcolm. Winn was a U.S. citizen who attended the Bronx High School of Science, Radcliffe College and Columbia University.
In May 1958, while Winn was a contestant on Dotto, a knowledge-quiz type TV game, a notebook which belonged to her was found by another contestant, Ed Hilgemeier, who discovered that the notebook included questions and answers to be used during Winn's appearances. Jack Narz, the host of Dotto at the time, recalled, when interviewed for a PBS documentary, that he believed Winn to be "a little too pat" when giving her answers. A CBS executive vice president, Thomas Fisher, tested kinescopes of the show against Winn's notebook and concluded that the show appeared to have been fixed.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Marie Winn” as american ornithologist. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as american ornithologist. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6763076. VIAF identifies the subject as 57784511. The Library of Congress control number is n50015905. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1936, 2024, 2010 and 1977.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Marie Winn”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Marie Winn primary sources, Marie Winn archive and Marie research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Marie Winn”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Marie Winn” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.