Karen Silkwood
E226116
United States Supreme Court case
biographical drama film
chemical technician
human
labor union activist
whistleblower
Karen Silkwood was an American chemical technician and labor union activist whose mysterious death after exposing safety violations at a plutonium plant made her a symbol of whistleblower courage and corporate accountability.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Karen Silkwood canonical | 6 |
| Karen Gay Silkwood | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T2009141 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Karen Silkwood Context triple: [Silkwood, portrays, Karen Silkwood]
-
A.
Mary Jo Kopechne
Mary Jo Kopechne was a young political campaign worker and former aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy whose death in 1969 at Chappaquiddick Island became the center of a major political scandal involving Senator Ted Kennedy.
-
B.
Lygia Clark
Lygia Clark was a pioneering Brazilian artist known for her influential role in Neo-Concrete art and her participatory, sensory-based works that blurred the boundaries between art and viewer.
-
C.
Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Emma Tillinger Koskoff is an American film producer best known for her longtime collaboration with director Martin Scorsese on acclaimed films such as The Wolf of Wall Street, The Departed, and The Irishman.
-
D.
Mary Lee Woods
Mary Lee Woods was a British mathematician and computer scientist who worked on early computers at Ferranti and was the mother of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.
-
E.
Sherron Watkins
Sherron Watkins is an American accountant and former Enron vice president best known as the whistleblower who warned company leadership about the fraudulent accounting practices that led to Enron’s collapse.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Karen Silkwood Target entity description: Karen Silkwood was an American chemical technician and labor union activist whose mysterious death after exposing safety violations at a plutonium plant made her a symbol of whistleblower courage and corporate accountability.
-
A.
Mary Jo Kopechne
Mary Jo Kopechne was a young political campaign worker and former aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy whose death in 1969 at Chappaquiddick Island became the center of a major political scandal involving Senator Ted Kennedy.
-
B.
Lygia Clark
Lygia Clark was a pioneering Brazilian artist known for her influential role in Neo-Concrete art and her participatory, sensory-based works that blurred the boundaries between art and viewer.
-
C.
Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Emma Tillinger Koskoff is an American film producer best known for her longtime collaboration with director Martin Scorsese on acclaimed films such as The Wolf of Wall Street, The Departed, and The Irishman.
-
D.
Mary Lee Woods
Mary Lee Woods was a British mathematician and computer scientist who worked on early computers at Ferranti and was the mother of World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee.
-
E.
Sherron Watkins
Sherron Watkins is an American accountant and former Enron vice president best known as the whistleblower who warned company leadership about the fraudulent accounting practices that led to Enron’s collapse.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (48)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
United States Supreme Court case
ⓘ
biographical drama film ⓘ chemical technician ⓘ human ⓘ labor union activist ⓘ whistleblower ⓘ |
| basedOn | life of Karen Silkwood ⓘ |
| causeOfDeath | automobile accident ⓘ |
| countryOfCitizenship | United States of America ⓘ |
| dateOfBirth | 1946-02-19 ⓘ |
| dateOfDeath | 1974-11-13 ⓘ |
| employer |
Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site
ⓘ
Kerr-McGee Corporation ⓘ
linked to:
Kerr-McGee Oil Industries
|
| ethnicGroup | White American ⓘ |
| familyName | Silkwood ⓘ |
| fieldOfWork |
nuclear fuel fabrication
ⓘ
occupational safety and health activism ⓘ |
| fullName |
Karen Gay Silkwood
ⓘ
linked to:
Karen Silkwood
|
| genreOfNotability | nuclear safety whistleblowing ⓘ |
| givenName | Karen ⓘ |
| hadChild | three children ⓘ |
| hasCauseOfDeath | unresolved, suspected foul play by some observers ⓘ |
| influenced | subsequent whistleblower protection debates in the United States ⓘ |
| legacy |
case that raised public awareness of nuclear safety and corporate accountability
ⓘ
symbol of whistleblower courage in the nuclear industry ⓘ |
| legalCase | Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee Corp. ⓘ |
| mannerOfDeath | car crash under disputed circumstances ⓘ |
| memberOf | Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union ⓘ |
| movement |
labor rights movement
ⓘ
workplace safety advocacy ⓘ |
| notableFor |
allegations of falsified quality-control records at a nuclear facility
ⓘ
mysterious death while en route to meet a journalist and union official ⓘ raising concerns about safety violations at a plutonium fuel fabrication plant ⓘ |
| occupation |
chemical technician
ⓘ
labor union activist ⓘ |
| placeOfBirth |
Longview, Texas, United States
ⓘ
linked to:
Longview, Texas
|
| placeOfDeath | near Crescent, Oklahoma, United States ⓘ |
| portrayedBy | Meryl Streep ⓘ |
| positionHeld | union activist ⓘ |
| religion | raised in a Christian background ⓘ |
| residence |
Oklahoma, United States
ⓘ
linked to:
Oklahoma
|
| significantEvent |
contamination with plutonium in 1974
ⓘ
death while driving to meet a journalist and union official ⓘ preparing to deliver documents on safety violations to a New York Times reporter ⓘ |
| spouse | William Meadows ⓘ |
| subjectOf |
Silkwood (film)
ⓘ
linked to:
Silkwood
punitive damages for nuclear safety violations ⓘ |
| workLocation | Crescent, Oklahoma, United States ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Karen Silkwood Description of subject: Karen Silkwood was an American chemical technician and labor union activist whose mysterious death after exposing safety violations at a plutonium plant made her a symbol of whistleblower courage and corporate accountability.
Referenced by (7)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.