Rip Van Winkle Rip Van Winkle "Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains and wakes up 20 years later, having missed the American Revolution. Irving wrote it while living in Birmingham, England, as part of the collection "The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent." The story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, but Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills." "Rip Van Winkle" is set
Katherine Van Winkle Palmer Katherine Van Winkle Palmer Katherine Van Winkle Palmer (1895 – September 12, 1982) was a Tertiary paleontologist, a scientist who studies fossils from the Cenozoic Era, and geologist. Palmer was recognized for her field/doctoral study on veneracean lamellibranches, a class of bivalve mollusks that include clams, scallops and oysters. Palmer was a director of the Paleontological Research Institution in New York. At this position, Palmer oversaw the publication of numerous "Bulletins of American Paleontology" as well as several issues of "Palaeontographica Americana". Palmer was born to Jacob Van Winkle and Edith Van Winkle in Oakville, Washington, where she spent her