W was the 19th letter and was pronounced "wah"; there was an equivalent letter in the old Baybayin script of the Philippines. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, is used for the voiced labial-velar approximant. W is the symbol for the chemical element tungsten, after its German (and alternative English) name, "Wolfram". It is also the SI symbol for the watt, the standard unit of power. Double-u, whose name reflects stages in the letter's evolution when it was considered two of the same letter, a double U, is the only modern English letter whose name has more than one syllable. It is
Wolfram Saenger Wolfram Saenger Wolfram Saenger (born 1939) is a German biochemist and protein crystallographer. In his research career spanning over 30 years he has worked at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine, Harvard University (Harvard Medical School) and the Free University of Berlin, where he led the Institute for Crystallography research until his retirement in 2011. A recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (1987) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, which is the highest honor awarded for achievements in research in Germany, and the Humboldt Prize (1988), he is best known for his research on X-ray crystallography of membrane proteins and